Posts tagged business
Be prepared for another Canada Post service stoppage
Jun 30th
Canada’s small businesses learned a tough lesson in business continuity readiness this month when Canada Post locked out its workers and snail mail came to a full stop.
The mail is an essential service for many businesses even in a world where more business is being done electronically all the time. Until 3D printers are combined with quantum tunneling technology by some sort of genius mad scientist to invent teleportation technology, we’re stuck wrapping stuff up in thin brown paper, taping it up, and sending it off in the mail. When your business is in selling physical goods, it doesn’t do you much good to be taking orders online when you can’t fill them.
Brian Jackson, Associate Editor, ITBusiness.ca
App Store for Web browsers coming soon
Nov 30th
By Katherine Noyes
Along with its audited financial statements indicating a revenue increase of 34 percent last year, Mozilla late last week also published a “State of Mozilla” report providing a glimpse at what the organization is planning for the future.
Firefox for Android is one part of those future plans, of course, and will be released “in a few months,” according to the report.
Even more intriguing, though, is the company’s confirmation that it’s planning what it calls an “Open Web App ecosystem”–also known, in other words, as a platform-independent app store.
Device-Independent
“The current app model has traits that threaten some of the characteristics that have made the Web so vibrant a platform, particularly in the mobile space,” Mozilla explained in its report.
Specifically, “apps are often device specific and platform specific,” it said. “Information we create in an application is stuck in that application and / or that platform. One doesn’t join a unified whole as one can with the Web. App-related information isn’t generally linkable or findable. In addition, developers often need to get permission from one or more gatekeepers to reach people–from a network operator, a device manufacturer, a ‘store’ operator. Similarly, consumers must go through these filters to access new functionality.”
Related Story: Toronto students behind Firefox browser’s amazing overhaul
As a way to remedy such problems, Mozilla has designed a prototype of an Open Web App ecosystem, it says, noting that “this includes a system design, technical documentation and examples of what such a system would look like and work like.” A video on YouTube offers further explanation.
HTML5, CSS and Javascript
Taking inspiration from the success of Apple’s App Store, of course, Google has been working on its own Chrome Web Store as well. Mozilla also mentioned similar plans back in May.
“Supporting the needs of Web developers in their efforts to develop websites and apps that aren’t bound to a specific browser and work across the Web is core to Mozilla’s public benefit mission,” Mozilla wrote back then.
Accordingly, an open Web app store should “exclusively host web applications based upon HTML5, CSS, Javascript and other widely-implemented open standards in modern web browsers – to avoid interoperability, portability and lock-in issues,” it explained.
Such a store should also “ensure that discovery, distribution and fulfillment works across all modern browsers, wherever they run (including on mobile devices)” and “set forth editorial, security and quality review guidelines and processes that are transparent and provide for a level playing field.”
Finally, an open Web app store should “respect individual privacy by not profiling and tracking individual user behavior beyond what’s strictly necessary for distribution and fulfillment” and it should “be open and accessible to all app producers and app consumers,” Mozilla wrote in May.
Too Many Apps For That?
App stores are becoming a ubiquitous part of the Internet; in addition to Apple’s longstanding offering and the planned entries from Google and Mozilla, there are also app stores from Research In Motion for the Blackberry phone and from Microsoft for Windows Phone 7.
Then, too, there’s Apple’s Mac App Store for desktops and Google’s assortment for Google TV, among others.
Few, however, can boast Mozilla’s commitment to openness and open standards like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Google’s Chrome store notwithstanding, it seems to me that amid all these platform-specific offerings, a device-agnostic store is just what we need.
How professional service firms can become more valuable
Sep 7th
What is your firm’s value proposition? To effectively answer this question, begin by identifying where your firm falls on your industry’s value chain. To understand the changing dynamics of the value chain concept, observe what’s happened to the music business.
Tim Williams
Consumers are still spending roughly the same amount of money on music, but the money isn’t going to the record companies and music stores; it’s going to iTunes. The money in the music business value chain is still there—it just moved.
The same is happening in other rapidly evolving industries. Companies are spending, but they’re spending in new and different areas of the value chain.
Sneak peek: Burstn pics, mobile style
Aug 25th
Picture this: you’ve just snapped some great pictures on your smartphone and want to share them instantly with friends, colleagues, customers, or with your social networks on Twitter and/or Facebook. What’s the fastest and easiest way to do this? Try Burstn them.
Krista Napier
Toronto-based Burstn has launched an app that allows iPhone users (and hopefully soon, at least for my sake, BlackBerry and Android users), the ability to share photos in real time without any hassles around uploading or posting them to a website.
I had a chance to chat with Josh Davey and Dave Senior from Burstn recently. Here’s a sneak peak into our chat: Read the rest of this entry »
Sneak Peak: Enabling Audience Interaction with Chatroll
Aug 6th
Engaging with audiences online and through mobile devices in real time is still relatively new, but quickly becoming a must for broadcasters, live event planners, big brands, and others that are looking to create more engaging audience conversations and experiences.
Krista Napier
Toronto-based Chatroll is looking to address this opportunity with its platform for real-time social interaction. I had a chance to chat with Jonathan McGee and Francis Ma from Chatroll June 21, 2010. Here’s a sneak peak into our Q&A:
Q: How do you differentiate Chatroll?
A: Chatroll allows broadcasters to quickly engage large audiences on a PC or a mobile device in real time. It allows the audience members to engage with one another, and the broadcaster, by commenting or asking questions. The conversation remains private (unlike a public forum like Twitter), providing an intimate conversation, but users can still sign in with their social media profiles so that other audience members can find and connect with them. Read the rest of this entry »
5 important things to know about Canadian cell phone plans
Aug 5th
The Canadian cell phone industry is confusing and difficult to understand. When comparing plans you have to deal with calling circle plans, specified evenings and weekend minutes, “anytime” minutes – it’s all so confusing. Well here are 5 items that you may not be aware of that you should know while you compare cell phone plans:
1. Long distance isn’t quite long distance
I always thought that if you were on a 100 min long distance plan that these minutes were in addition to my other minutes as I am paying extra for them. But what long distance plans do is to convert your regular minutes to long distance minutes. In other words, 100 of your 200 min plan is allocated for long distance usage as opposed to 200 regular mins plus 100 additional for long distance. Read the rest of this entry »
How to Out-Secure the Competition in 5 Easy Steps
Jul 26th
Every year, we encounter a wide variety of companies, firms of different sizes that play distinct roles in their respective industries. Some are in a position to mitigate all sorts of risks to information assets, but they are in the minority.
The vast majority of companies have adopted controls that are considered standard (firewall, anti-virus, locks on server room doors, etc), but there is a general consensus among the staff that the really valuable assets of the firm continue to be exposed to risk. Management knows this but is often afraid of spiraling security costs once the decision is made to at least look into the company’s level of exposure, called the company’s security posture.
Claudiu Popa
I have compiled a list of no-nonsense recommendations to help anyone tackle that challenge, and mitigate the vast majority of the risk to their business. These are simple, require little effort and their corresponding investment can easily be contained. Here they are: Read the rest of this entry »
Not yet too late for Ontario, BC SMBs to become HST compliant
Jul 14th
Despite a long government campaign to get taxpayers onboard with the HST which came into effect this July 1st, a majority of small businesses in Ontario and British Columbia are opposed to and unprepared for the new tax regime.
Nestor Arellano
More that 54 per cent of respondents in Ontario and 47 per cent in B.C. won’t be ready to comply with the changes, according to recent survey by poll body Angus Reid Public Opinion for Intuit Canada, a tax software developer.
No less than 35 per cent of respondents in both provinces also admitted they don’t understand the need for the new measures. Read the rest of this entry »
4 tips on making it big on eBay
May 19th
Huge online traffic generated by eBay caught the eye of Henry’s decision makers back in 2000.
“We taught it would be a great channel for our hard-to-sell items and potentially an additional revenue stream,” according to Max Payne, director of marketing at Henry’s.
Nestor Arellano
The company never expected the move would become so big that it would open the 100-year-old Canadian photo supply store to a whole new group of American customers. Read the rest of this entry »
Sun shines on offshore IT services in Manila
Feb 19th
Call centres – the term seems inextricable from the idea of offshore IT services in the Philippines.
Indeed even when I talk to fellow Filipinos both here and back home the conversation almost invariably turn to how many call centre facilities keep popping up in Manila. They say the city “never sleeps” because people are now working 24/7 to meet the needs of North American clients. In fact in 2007 call centre agents were somewhat exempt from a citywide curfew that was brought down during a failed “coup attempt”.
During a trip to Manila last week, I found this to be true and much more.
In reality, it’s not all about call centres. True, call centre may account for the bulk of the country’s multi-billion dollar earning IT industry, but the Philippines is offering a variety of non voice-based business process outsourcing (BPO) services as well.
The range of available services go from software development, to network service and maintenance, back office processes and payroll management, to financial analysis and legal research, medical transcription, to digital animation and online game development. Read the rest of this entry »
