Jakob Nielsen Talks Mobile Usability At Google

Veteran web usability consultant Jakob Nielsen recently gave an “At Google” speak about mobile usability and where it’s headed. Google has now made the debate available for all to peer. If your’e developing a mobile app or site, you might want to provide this guy an hour of some time. He’s one of many biggest names in usability, and has a considerable number of advice. Nielsen, an early consultant at Google years ago, discusses usability guidelines, how they relate to technology, designing for platform, engineering and the way to bring usability to the loads. Nielsen was a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems within the mid-nineties. He co-founded usability consulting company Nielsen Norman Group, and writes an internet design newsletter called Alertbox. He’s also credited with founding the “discount usability engineering” movement, which helps designers make changes to their interfaces quickly and inexpensively.

10 Ways Government Clouds Have Changed This Year

Top 10 Government IT Innovators Of 2013 (click image for larger view) In December 2012, Cary Landis and that i made 10 predictions about how cloud computing was prone to evolve this year and the way those changes were more likely to impact enterprise computing. But things are moving fast on the earth of cloud computing, reaffirming a few of those predictions and altering others. Here is a recap of what I predicted then and an update of the way I see those trends unfolding now. Webcasts More >> White Papers More >> Reports More >> 1. Cloud technologies will converge. The cloud will continue to forge an enormous convergence of technologies — almost like the evolution of the cellphone to the smartphone. The lines between platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and cloud services brokerages will blur right into a conceptual operating system for the “Web as a platform” — providing tools to permit users to milk multiple cloud solutions instantaneously, and bringing the cloud toward the tip... Read More »

Facebook Launches Video, CPA Bidding For Mobile App Ads

A year ago, Facebook launched mobile app install ads, and today, they get video support and the facility for developers to set cost per action bids. Video ads will appear inside the mobile news feed when the user clicks the play button. They are able to then view video featuring the app, which supplies developers the possibility to aim and sell them on it. “Video creative has proven to be a good way to drive engagement in News Feed, and we glance forward to helping developers use their video creative in finding new app installs,” says Facebook’s Radu Margarint in a blog post. He shares here quote from John Clelland, VP, Interactive Marketing at DoubleDown Casino, an early test partner for video mobile app ads: “In our early tests, we found that using video in our mobile app ads ended in increased install rates and decreased costs per install. We’ve seen tremendous success with mobile app ads and are longing for using video to cause... Read More »

Higher Ed’s Cloud Computing Forecast: Stormy

One of the definitions of the area “cloud” in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary is “something that obscures or blemishes”. This definition often seems fitting for today’s computing cloud. I actually have seen quite a few universities move services to the cloud only to reverse course and move them back to campus as a consequence of “blemishes” in security, reliability, service, cost, integration issues and/or compliance concerns. In general, at Southern Illinois University (SIU) we’re currently moving faculty and staff email back to campus. And it’s not just higher education. A Gartner analyst recently predicted that by 2014, 30% of enterprises using software as a service will move back to on premises systems. Webcasts More >> White Papers More >> Reports More >> [ How do you get more robust online services? Read 7 Habits Of Successful DevOps. ] Personally, i’ve been evaluating cloud services for higher education for the previous couple of years and feature rarely found them a fit for my organization, even though yearly cloud... Read More »

Microsoft Backtracks On Windows 8.1 Availability, Developers Can Get It Now

In late August, Microsoft announced that Windows 8.1 was shipping out to OEMs. Within the same announcement, Microsoft said that subscribers to its MSDN or TechNet services doesn’t get early copies of Windows 8.1. As we learned from the Xbox One debacle, however, Microsoft will relent when enough people complain. Microsoft announced today that Windows 8.1 RTM is now available to subscribers to MSDN and TechNet. This ensures that developers get a head start on making apps for Windows 8.1 before it launches to consumers in October. So, what changed between late August and now? The folks who pay Microsoft an annual fee rightly complained that obtaining Windows 8.1 mutually as everybody else was unfair and, frankly, really stupid. Here’s what Microsoft’s Steven Guggenheimer needed to say about it: We heard from you that our decision not to initially release Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM bits was a large challenge for our developer partners as they’re readying new Windows 8.1 apps and... Read More »