The Face of Change: 3 Apps Disrupting Enterprise Social Media

As individuals in the 21st century, we all have a sense of what people mean when they use the phrase “social media.” Immediately, our minds populate a list that includes sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We may even have knowledge of enterprise-specific programs like Slack that have changed the face of professional messaging.

What many digitally savvy people are unaware of, however, is that there are many other platforms that are disrupting enterprise social media as we know it – and if you want to stay ahead of the curve, you need to get on board. For companies committed to digital leadership, these are the three new, must-have apps.

The Next Generation of Visuals

Multimedia social network use has become the gold standard these days, as you can see by dropping in on just about any professional or personal account across the complete range of platforms. Sam Ovens’ peppers his Twitter feed with screenshots of client interactions, companies share video from their product development team, and when all else fails, even major brands aren’t above posting a few baby animal images. Soon, though, this approach to visual won’t be enough, thanks to apps like Storehouse.

What Storehouse brings to the table that sets it apart from other image dominated programs, like Instagram or Snapchat, is the ability to coordinate different sources of images. That means it can pull from your Instagram, Flickr, camera roll, and more to help you create elaborate social media narratives. Although TechCrunch recognized Storehouse as a top appin 2015, most companies haven’t started using it as part of their overall marketing strategy.

The Competitive Edge

There are two main components to brand development and management – the narrative you put out about your brand and what others say about it. While you control that first component, it can be hard to keep up with the broader commentary pointed in your direction, and that’s where Brand24 comes in.

Brand24 is a social media monitor, tuning into your different accounts to catch whatever feedback comes your way, and alerting you to positive and negative comments that may require further attention. This is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of things and prevents you from missing key customer service opportunities.

The Organizer You Always Needed

In business, sometimes the greatest innovation comes from finding new ways to do old things – progress isn’t always product-focused. That’s what makes Buffer such an innovative tool; it offers a better management system for handling the overwhelming weight of social media.

Plenty of platforms are focused on helping you plan and schedule for a single site, but Buffer ties together Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and more for a simplified experience. You won’t believe how much time you were wasting coordinating your social media until you see how much easier Buffer makes it.

The role of social media in business will only continue to grow in coming years, so it’s important to stay on the cutting edge, adopting new apps to make your job easier and your strategies more innovative. These three apps are just the beginning of a total social media transformation.

This Blog was first published on: http://smarterware.org/2016/10/face-change-3-apps-disrupting-enterprise-social-media/

Blackberry launches its last, most powerful Android phone

BlackBerry Ltd launched its third Android-based phone on Tuesday, the last device whose success will be the company's financial responsibility, opting to price its top-end device well below Apple Inc's iPhone 7.

The Canadian smartphone pioneer, which has lost most of the market to Apple and others, last month said it planned to completely outsource the development of its smartphones to focus on its more profitable business of making software and managing mobile devices.

That means the Android-based DTEK60 will be the last phone for which BlackBerry buys components itself, which carries a heavier risk if it does not sell well.

"This one is our phone," BlackBerry Chief Operating Officer Marty Beard said in an interview. "This is fully our responsibility."

BlackBerry's Toronto-listed shares were down 1.2 percent in afternoon trade at C$9.70. They had touched C$11.18 - their highest since January - on Sept. 28 when the company announced its outsourcing plan.

"BlackBerry had to kill its hardware in order to save it," website TechCrunch wrote in a broadly positive review of the DTEK60 that nevertheless questioned how much interest it would elicit.

Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry does not have any deals with telecom companies to distribute the device.

Instead, it is pitching the phone directly to companies and governments, as well as selling it on its own websites in the United States, Canada, and several major European countries.

"It's not necessarily an anti-carrier strategy," Beard said. "It's more that we see this as the most efficient and most cost-effective way to get to that customer base."

The device, which has a 5.5 inch touchscreen, will be priced at $499. Apple's iPhone 7 with the same screen size starts at $769, while the equivalent version of Android-maker Alphabet Inc's Pixel starts at $649.

"Certainly it's not going to be the next superstar in the marketplace," said William Stofega, a mobile phone analyst at IDC Corp. "But it's a solid device that brings some really high-end security features and capabilities to it."

The DTEK60 is being manufactured by TCL Corp, a Chinese electronics company that makes phones as well as televisions, air conditioners and other household appliances.

BlackBerry launched its first Android device, the high-end Priv, in November last year and followed it with the much cheaper DTEK50 in July. The company last month wrote down $137 million of phone inventory and supply commitments.

Beware Skype, WhatsApp is getting video calling feature

You already send text messages and make voice calls with WhatsApp, now you can also make video calls through the app — provided you’ve an Android phone, for now.

 Though the company hasn’t begun advertising this yet, but new beta versions of its Android app come with the ability to make video calls. If you and your friend are both on the latest beta version of WhatsApp for Android, you will now see "Video Call" and "Voice Call" options when you hit the dialer button on top. Do note that the feature is still in early stage, so the video feed could stutter at times.

To get this feature, you will need to grab the latest beta version of WhatsApp. The company maintains an official beta testing program on Google Play, and one can sign up for it by tapping the "Become a Tester" button. Alternatively, you can also download the latest beta build of WhatsApp from third-party site APKMirror. The website offers Google-signed apps. Ensure that you snag version 2.16.318 or higher of WhatsApp.

Earlier this month, some Windows Phone users reported that they had received the video calling feature on WhatsApp. Now that WhatsApp has started to exude video calling ability on Android’s beta apps, it seems likely that its iOS and stable Android versions will follow the suit soon.

Video calling is one of the most sought after features on WhatsApp. The Facebook-owned company has in many ways revolutionized how people text, and in recent times, how they make voice calls. Though there are a plethora of apps and services that offer video calling ability — many of them for free — WhatsApp getting this feature would be noteworthy because of its one-billion plus users.

5 Best Open Source Mobile Test Automation Tools

Short Bytes: There is a wide range of devices and platforms one needs to account for when developing a mobile app. An automation app for Mobile Testing can save development and testing time. Here are 5 top open source automated mobile testing frameworks to use, including the likes of Appium, Robotium, and Selendroid.

Testing a software application can be quite cumbersome. Software companies have separate teams allotted just for testing and analyzing their applications. To ease this process, they often design and develop their own effective testing strategies.

The process gets further complicated when the application is cross-platform rather than a single platform (native). For example, a cross-platform mobile app accounts for usage across multiple devices and operating systems. Additionally, mobile hardware and their operating systems are constantly upgraded. Therefore, it is natural to have a generic automated tool for testing software applications. Focussing on mobile applications, the first step in automating your testing is to choose the right framework.

Here are 5 top open source mobile testing frameworks to use:

1. Appium (Android, iOS)

• Supports Android versions from 2.3 and above
• Utilizes UI Automator and WebDriver libraries
• Supports Java, C#, Ruby and those available in the WebDriver library
• Cross Browser support (Safari and Chrome)
• Compatible with JSON wire protocol
• Cross-platform capabilities to run tests across multiple devices

2. Robotium (Android)

• Supports Android 1.6 version and above
• Easy to write powerful test scenarios
• Supports Java
• Handles multiple Android routines automatically
• No Record and Play function and no screenshots

3. Selendroid (Android)

• Uses Selenium 2 client API
• Fully compatible with JSON wire protocol
• No alteration of app under test is needed to automate it
• Can interact with multiple Android devices at the same time

4. Keep It Functional (iOS)

• Supports Objective-C and Swift languages
• Strong and active open source community
• Tests are easy to write, in the same language as the code
• Little or no external dependencies

5. Monkey Talk (Android, iOS)

• Supports a broad range of basic to advanced tests
• A Powerful cross-platform tool enabling high productivity
• Records and plays test scripts for cross-platform apps
• Widely used for native Android, iOS, HTML5, and Adobe Flex apps

These are the top open source tools for mobile test automation. They have a large open source community that is involved in guiding users and contributing to the project. Try any of the above frameworks for a faster mobile app development.

So, which mobile testing app do you use? Do you have something to add? Comment and share with us.
This blog was first published on: https://fossbytes.com/5-open-source-mobile-test-automation-tools/

How to install the Android 7.1 developer preview on your device

Android 7.1 marks the first time Nexus owners aren’t getting the full suite of upgrades from Google. The Pixel phones have some exclusive features, including built-in Google Assistant, the new Pixel Launcher, and fingerprint sensor gestures. However, not all of this is an arbitrary decision to add value to the Pixel. In the case of some features (e.g. fingerprint sensor gestures), there are hardware limitations in existing devices that prevent the feature from working. So, it’s not technically a Pixel-exclusive; there just aren’t any other phones that support it right now.

As for what you can expect in the developer preview, there will be a handful of noticeable changes. For one, touch display responsiveness had been boosted. There’s also a new storage manager that helps you clear old files from your device to get more space for new stuff. Android’s launcher shortcuts, which were previously demoed in the 7.0 preview, are coming back. Although, now they are called “app shortcuts,” which might be the least descriptive name ever. They’re long-press shortcuts that app icons can produce to specific functionality in an app. For example, the camera icon includes links to take a video and take a selfie.

To install the developer preview, you need to have a Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, or Pixel C. Other Nexus devices like the Nexus 9 and (maybe) Nexus 6 will be added next month. The easiest way to to go to the beta site and sign in with your Google account. There, you’ll be shown eligible devices. Once you choose to enroll one, an OTA update to the developer preview will be pushed down in a few minutes. Doing this will not erase your data, but it’s a preview. Things could go wrong, so back everything up to be safe.

If you want to handle the process manually, there are full system images available for download. This doesn’t require joining the beta, and you can install them even if you’re running a third-party ROM. You will need the Android SDK working on your computer, and your device’s bootloader needs to be unlocked. This will delete everything on your device, by the way.

While this is technically for developers, plenty of enthusiasts are installing the beta too. It’s a pretty smooth process, and you can get a look at Android 7.1 before almost everyone else. Google is planning to have a final version of Android 7.1 available on Nexus devices by late this year or early next.

This blog was first published on: http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/237995-how-to-install-the-android-7-1-developer-preview-on-your-device

4 TECHNOLOGY PREDICTIONS FOR 2017

Whenever the calendar changes from December to January, the world responds with incredible optimism and anticipation. It doesn’t matter how rough or bleak things were the previous year, there’s just something hopeful about a brand new year.

As 2016 comes to a close in the next three months, we think it’s interesting to take a look at some technological developments and make a few predictions about what experts believe will happen in 2017. Let’s analyze some of these predictions:

1.   Home Automation Becomes Mainstream

When smart home toys and applications first hit the marketplace decades ago, there was this idea that homes would suddenly transform into futuristic structures in a matter of months. Yet, here we are in 2016 and smart home technology is still only being utilized by a small percentage of the marketplace. Could 2017 be the year that this changes?

While the upper end of the market has always had an affinity for smart home “toys,” we’re even seeing rental properties enter the market now. This is a sign that big things are still to come. Be on the lookout for tremendous growth in this tech space.

2.   Surgeons Attempt the First Human Head Transplant

“Italian neuroscientist Dr. Sergio Canavero made headlines last year when he announced his plans to perform the first human head transplant in 2017,” CBS News reported in August. “Since then, he’s recruited Chinese surgeon Dr. Xiaoping Ren, to work with him, and now has found a volunteer patient for the procedure: a Russian man named Valery Spiridonov.”

From smart home automation to human head transplants – how’s that for a transition? Well, believe it or not, the first attempt at a human head transplant is reportedly a full go. Many critics call this “junk science,” but Canavero is confident it’ll work.

3.   Say Hello to the e-Shower

You can mess with a lot of products, but people get a little sensitive when it comes to their shower. After all, the shower is one of the few private places people ever get to relax. That’s why there’s some skepticism when it comes to the concept of the e-Shower, but don’t tell its team of developers.

The e-Shower, which is supposed to be released at some point in 2017, captures water in a shower tray, filters and purifies the water, and then reintroduces the water back into your shower’s water supply immediately. It reportedly circulates the same drop of water seven times before it descends into the sewer system. Because this eco-friendly shower uses 80 percent less energy and 90 percent less water, it could save homeowners as much as $1,000 per year. Is this the product of the future?

4.   Virtual Reality Classrooms Become Possible

Virtual reality technology has really taken off in the past six months. It finally has the mainstream appeal that its need for so many years and the market is ready for mass adoption.

One unique way in which virtual reality may be used comes in the form of teaching. Harvard Business School is one of the first to begin using virtual classrooms in which students can attend class remotely without sacrificing the in-class experience. But more schools are expected to follow suit in 2017. While it remains to be seen if virtual reality teaching could be used in lower levels – including high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools – the possibility certainly exists.

What Does 2017 Hold?

Nobody can know for sure what 2017 holds in terms of technological development and innovation, but we do know this much: we’re in for some exciting changes. From home automation to healthcare, 2017 is already shaping up to be a promising year.  

This blog was first published on: http://smarterware.org/2016/10/4-technology-predictions-2017/

After Killing iPhone’s 3.5mm Jack, Apple Plans To Remove USB Ports From Upcoming MacBooks

Short Bytes: Following the recent rumors, it’s expected that the new MacBook Pro laptops will do away with the traditional USB and the MagSafe charging ports in favor of the USB Type-C port. The Thunderbolt port will also be upgraded to Thunderbolt 3.

 

The fall is about to arrive and the rumor mill has started churning news about Apple MacBook lineup. It’s almost a year and a half since Apple released the MacBook Pro with Retina display in May 2015. Reports from Macotakara, claimed trusted Chinese sources, suggest that there is a new MacBook Pro in the works.

The new MacBook Pro is expected to launch on October 27 but the official release announcements haven’t been made. It is rumored to come with the USB-C port which originally debuted in the Apple ecosystem with the 12-inch MacBook. This will also mark the exit of the normal USB ports and the MegSafe charging port from the MacBook Pro. The USB Type-C on the MacBook Pro is accompanied by Thunderbolt 3.0 port. It’s, however, not known how many USB Type-C ports will be there.

Other than the changes in the ports, there might be an OLED touch bar above the keyboard replacing the physical function keys and allowing the buttons to be customized. The Touch ID support is also expected to be introduced. The rumors don’t include reports about4G LTE feature patented by Apple for the laptops.

It’s good to see that Apple is not ditching the analog audio jack in their MacBook lineup. And Macbook owners will have the opportunity to play with the dinos for some time.

That was for the Pros. In the case of the MacBook Air, 11-inch variant may go out of production so that more attention could be paid to the 13-inch MacBook Air. A Type-C USB port is also rumored to land on the MacBook Air.

Macotakara via 9to5Mac

If you have something to add, tell us in the comments below.

This blog was first published on: https://fossbytes.com/macbook-pro-release-date-and-new-features/