Custom Phones

Since everything these days can be customized just the way you want it to be down to the ads that you see. After the customization of software development, the only thing left is the actual phone itself. Like playing with LEGOs, a modular smartphone is a make-it-yourself device consisting of an endoskeleton base and modules that attach to create a custom phone. Don't care about having a camera? Swap it out for a larger battery. Want to update your display without getting an entirely new phone? You could do that, too. Motorola has been collaborating on a mission to make these devices a reality with Dave Hakkens, creator of a similar initiative called Phoneblocks, since this past fall. Project Ara would result in less electronic waste with devices that last a lot longer. This is something that would definitely catch on and really take off. Any thoughts?

Slow to Adopt

I was enamored of the whole idea of “find me, follow me” technology to ensure you didn’t miss calls, not to mention the ability to collaborate easily by clicking on names in documents or contacts lists to launch chat sessions, audio- or videoconferences. Yet the combined efforts of Avaya, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft don’t seem to have moved the needle in favor of UC. As collaboration and mobility have become even more important in the last few years, I kept waiting for UC to take its place beside productivity applications and ERP as a key technology. And yet many companies and small businesses are very slow to adopt this technology. It would improve efficiency and productivity immensely and many of the internet phone companies offer free trials that let you test drive the services and really see what you are missing out on.

Online Applications

Finding a job is hard enough but now the new freshly minted college graduates have to deal with online applications for graduate or professional schools as well as internet phone interviews. With early admission deadlines looming for hundreds of thousands of students, the new version of the online Common Application shared by more than 500 colleges and universities has been plagued by numerous malfunctions, alarming students and parents and putting admissions offices weeks behind schedule. For the nonprofit company, also called the Common Application, that creates the form, it has been a summer and fall of frantic repair work, cataloged on its Web site, and frequent mea culpas. In an interview, Rob Killion, the executive director, readily acknowledged a wide range of failings. But he said that they were being fixed and that the number of applications was up more than 20 percent from last year, indicating that students were successfully navigating the system. Problems became evident as soon as the application was released in August, including some confusing wording that was later changed. Students who thought they had finished the application found that it was incomplete because questions had been added after its release. As changes were made, some who had started their applications early found themselves locked out of the system.

Who is Not Connected?

Fifteen percent of adults in the United States are not online, for reasons that range from lack of interest to fear of the unknown to not being able to afford a computer, says a new survey. So they exist! According to the report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 92% of respondents who said they aren't on the Internet also said they have no desire to be. Now this is a more interesting statistic. What are the other 8% doing to get online? By far, the most popular reason given was some version of "I just don't care about it." More than one-third said they are "just not interested," "don't need it/don't want it," or "think it's a waste of time." More than 4 out of 10 of nonconnected people said they'd asked a friend or family member to look something up or complete a task online for them. So the internet has its far reaches and all the website development can still reach those people. What do you think about internet connectivity? Should it at least be available to everyone?

Improving Your Smartphone Camera

Do you like the camera that comes with your phone services and device? Well if not, Sony has rolled out the QX10 and QX100. They’re basically like point-and-shoot cameras except that instead of being cameras, they’re lenses that snap onto your smartphone. Sony calls them “smartphone attachable lens-style cameras.” Just rolls right off the tongue. All the camera components are stuffed inside the lens. Your smartphone’s data connection is leveraged to share your photos with others online. Photos are stored to both the lens and your phone, and apps will be available for iPhone and Android. The price tag? A lofty $250. I guess the question here is if you are willing to spend that kinda of money on a camera that attached to your phone. It is 19 megapixels and fairly bulky. Personally if you are going to invest money in a camera, do it right. Get the camera and all the lenses that can be attached for the type of pictures you will be taking. Do not try making your smartphone more than it really is. Or you could just get the new Nokia phone.

The Wolves

There will be a time in your life when you will be thrown to the wolves, if it has not already happened. One of the things that I can say about that is that it is important to take it with stride and really treat it as a learning opportunity. Say it is your first day at your new job that you just landed. You are asked to create a mobile application under certain requirements with a deadline of a couple hours. Suddenly everything you know about computer science decided to get up and leave. Take it as a lesson in learning how to handle things when you get put on the spot or are not prepared. It can also serve as a reminder of what to expect at all times. In certain industries, such as software development companies, it is important to be a couple steps ahead of the game because it is the only way that you will be able to thrive. So if you get thrown to the wolves, find the leader and become part of the pack.

iPhone Trade In

Apple said starting Friday that it would give customers credit for functioning older models at Apple Stores. The credit can be used toward the purchase of a new iPhone, which will be activated in the store. It didn’t say how much older phones would be worth. But other brokers such as Gazelle.com offer anywhere from $10 for a working iPhone 3G to $350 for an iPhone 5 that is in pristine condition. Similar trade-in programs are run by retailers including Best Buy, Target and Radio Shack. This is going to be a great deal but I cannot see them offering that much for the older versions of the iPhone even if it is in perfect condition and the phone services are working great. What do you think of this trade in? Are you going to be in line waiting for the new iPhone?

A Sense of Humor

The people at AB-Soft are very professional when it comes to business application and IP telephony but to keep the creativity flowing, they also love to have a great time and a couple good laughs. This is one of the articles that they found and decided to share:

"How to Read an Internet Article:

1) Step one: tweet the article.
2) Okay, time to dive in. But first things first: scroll down to the Comments section and leave a comment or two. Be sure to point out any grammatical mistakes other people make.
3) Let's do this thing. Scan the headline and byline. Suddenly you feel VERY EXCITED/VERY ANGRY. Let Twitter know.
4) Before you forget, email the link to your Liberal/Conservative/Fun/Mean uncle who agrees/disagrees with you on everything. The subject line could read: "Thought of you" but there should be no text in the email body. Just a link. CC 12 members of your extended family and two old college buddies.
5) Can you believe this article? Quickly copy and paste the last sentence of the piece and share it on Facebook without quotation marks, so it's unclear if you wrote it yourself. Neither confirm nor deny this. No time for that.
6) "Like" the article you just shared on Facebook.
7) If no one has replied yet to the email you sent, maybe it didn't go through. Reply-all with the same link.
8) Someone just responded to your Facebook post: "These aren't you're own words." Defend yourself by immediately correcting them: "It's your* not you're."
9) Take a screenshot of the Facebook interaction and Instagram it. For a caption, use #FactsOnly or any series of five emojis.
10) This article is really firing you up. Cool off with a coconut water.
11) Your comments are still pending. Email the site moderator a couple of times.
12) You're getting a bit hungry. Click a link on the right-hand rail about the health benefits of olive oil. Open it up in a tab for later.
13) Okay, time to rock this article. But you better quickly tweet about the olive oil piece. You should probably email it, too. Your mom's gonna love that one."

Now I know that you are smiling and getting back to work after that wonderful distraction.

Health Apps

Application development has come a long way and now it is delving into the health care industry. Before you go ahead and download some of these apps, the insurance company that you are with may have their own apps and nurses on call which is usually free of charge. It will save a lot of time going to urgent care and seeing a doctor or a nurse. The Urgent Care app is just what you’re looking for. This app has a medical dictionary and a symptom checker for self-diagnosis, but its most notable feature is the ability to get in touch with one of Urgent Care’s registered nurses at any time for the convenience fee of $3.99. If you have a problem that needs a doctor, the nurse can get a doctor on the line who can even prescribe medications. It’s like visiting the doctor — without having to actually visit the doctor. If you have non-urgent medical questions that don’t seem worth going to the doctor or calling a nurse to get answers for, HealthTap may be the solution. On HealthTap, you can ask questions that will be answered by U.S.-licensed physicians within a day. Or, you can browse through the many questions that have already been answered on the service. If you don’t need built-in access to a live medical professional, our pick for the best first aid reference app is the American Red Cross First Aid app. It provides detailed instructions for dealing with countless medical situations from bug bites to CPR.

Solution to Running Out of Room

We are constantly relying on devices for storage and it seems like we are always running out of it. Most mobile devices top out at 64GB, and while you might see a tablet with 128GB of 256GB of storage, that’s still a long way from the terabyte or more that you find on even the most basic laptops and desktops. Even with all the site development and online storage, you might still be running out of room to stick your stuff. The solution? Instead of putting memory cells on a conventional 2D plane, Samsung reworked its long-serving Charge Trap Flash technology to create a 3D cell structure with more breathing room. The result is flash that improves both reliability and speed at higher densities. A new company called Crossbar claims to have another solution, called Resistive RAM. To some extent, the rise of online storage reduces the need for lots of on-board storage, but it’s not a total replacement. As mobile apps get more sophisticated, and make use of higher-resolution images and video elements, we’ll need more space to hold them all.

Protecting Yourself from the Sun

The sun gives rise to life and also makes dermatologists earn their living. If you do not want to give the doctor your entire paycheck, it might be a good idea to put on some sunscreen. One of the first things you should do is find a sunscreen that you will actually like. It makes it more likely that you will be putting it on and reapplying it. As a general rule, SPF 15 blocks 93% of UVB rays, SPF 30 blocks 97% and SPF 50 blocks 98%. Doctors now typically recommend at least SPF 30 -- at least being the key words. If you have a family history of skin cancer or are vacationing in a tropical spot (where the sun is especially intense), go for 50 or even 70. Instead of that old advice to use a shot glass-size dose, all experts recommend applying two coats. Squeeze a line of lotion down your arms and legs and rub in, then do it again. Lastly, know that sunscreen does not protect you completely so make sure that you are outside the least during midday when the sun is the strongest as an extension of your protection.

Consequences of Being Reachable

Say you are running a business. It is important to have a certain presence in that business but there can be unintended consequences for that. First of all there is a certain expectation of availability. People will want to call you and it is important to answer in order to build a customer list and customer loyalty. This means that in addition to having call forwarding to ensure that no matter what number is called, you will be answering every time. One type of problem is simply not using presence settings properly. These options help end users self-manage their availability, so if their status is regularly changing, presence can be invaluable. However, it can just as well create artificial blockages when settings are not updated. To illustrate, if you switch to “do not disturb” or “offline” when going to a meeting – but don’t switch back to “available” after the meeting, you may miss out on important messages or invites. Some people rely solely on presence indicators to determine who gets contacted.

VoIP Market Growing

One of the best ways to find out if a service is worth it is to see where the market is going. There have been some comments made about how apps and internet phones services are revolutionizing the world and our culture. According to surveys and market research, the market has grown about 10% over the last couple years and it looks like it will continue to grow because of the many businesses adopting the VoIP services. It is one of the best communication devices for small businesses because hosted VoIP enables the business professional to have a full system without any of the hardware. Small business will start to look more professional and credible as well as much bigger than they really are. It is a small investment with large returns. Most of the internet phone services include call forwarding, call logs, and extensions. Also, most will give you a chance to try out their service free of charge so that you can decide which service fit your business.

Internet Telephony: The Good and Bad

Mobile phones have become such an important part of the world that they are as much a permanent part of our existence as our voices are. Communication services are large part of companies and the phone service companies have definitely taken a huge chunk of business profits and now businesses are looking for better ways to communicate and share information or collaborate. Enter mobile VoIP. One of the advantages of using it is that it eliminates indoor cellular dead zones. Less interruptions can be useful if you are always holding important teleconferences. Internet phones also reduce costs that are related to long distance and international calling, employees needing certain devices, and even carrier charges. On the down side, VoIP services are lacking when it comes to security compared to other technologies. How do you weigh the pros and cons?

Mini Smartphones

When the smart phones first came out, the trend has been the bigger the better to the point of holding a tablet next to your head while you are chit chatting away with someone. Phone services have also came a long way and kept up with the emerging hardware. Recently, the trend has reversed and now phone companies are coming out with phones that are much smaller than their standard. This will not be a trend that overtakes the whole market because phone are no longer one size fits all. Some people want a smaller phone because they have small hands or wish to fit their smartphones in their pockets. Other people want to use their smartphones to watch movies and play games which are better displayed on a larger screen. What kind of phone do you prefer?

Music and Productivity

Can music really increase focus and in turn productivity? While working on web development or concentrating on that project with a quickly approaching deadline, you could be listening to music from Focus at Will. It is a new streaming music service that can more than triple a listener's attention span while studying or working under deadlines. But it's no ordinary collection of tracks. Each composition is designed to keep the brain engaged past the point of around 20 minutes, when people's minds begin to wander. You might be wondering what it is that makes your mind wander. It is the limbic system that constantly wants to interrupt you because it is looking for food or danger. By playing music that soothes this part of the brain, people can focus on a task for as long as 100 minutes, according to Henshall's research, conducted by Bowker market research and the psychology department at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Computers Were Just the Beginning

Do you remember when the 1983 Time issue came out naming the PC as the Machine of the year? Of course you do, or you would not be traipsing around the internet reading these posts while you have a whole slew of CMS development projects to get done. Anywho, while you are here, I might as well entertain the notion that you are interested in what I have to say about the PC revolution that got part of its fuel from the Time article. In retrospect, what the 21-page Machine of the Year cover package captures isn’t the beginning of the PC so much as the end of the beginning. The industry still had room for a bevy of hobbyist-oriented, sometimes downright rudimentary computers from Apple, Atari, Commodore, Osborne, Radio Shack, Texas Instruments, Timex and others. None of them had futuristic features like a graphical user interface and a mouse; most ran their own operating systems and weren’t compatible with anything else on the market.

Happy New Year!

As we move into a new year, there are lots of resolutions made as well as reflections about the past year. To make sure that the coming year is a great one, there are a couple things that you could do. First of all slow down and take some notice of the world around you. Pick three good things that you see or experience during the day, then write them down. Then do not forget to say thank you. Connecting with others this way will help you get outside of your own head. When you are working as part of a team, such as on web development or application development, it is also important to notice what you have work together with each others strengths. AB Soft has some of the best teams in the software development market and the office is extremely comfortable to work in. They have plenty of openings to look into.