All About Web Innovations

It’s enough to look around and see the booming increase of mobile phones and handheld computers; most modern users have at least one handheld device. Increased simplicity has caused ‘premium’-featured models to be introduced to the ‘entry-level’ customers. Have you ever seen a child Tweeting away or updating their Facebook status from their mobile phone? It’s not restricted to them anymore, with business-people actively performing their entire work with the use of their mobile phone only – sending and receiving e-mails, sharing data, surfing the mobile website, etc.

For quite some time, people were unaware of the increasing gravity of this new mobile web front. How many are there, you might ask? Wikipedia claims that “The total number of mobile website users grew past the total number of desktop computer-based web users for the first time in 2008,” according to data report compiled by the International Telecommunications Union on Oct 2009. Although a complete citation is still needed at the time of writing in order to meet Wikipedia’s guidelines, such a statement a simple observation informs you that this statement is fundamentally true, or at least very accurate. Chances are that existing and potential customers are out there already. Can you afford to be left out? If you already have a website or are planning to do so, the question is rather rhetorical.

Mobile web – a new frontier

Website owners willing to move along with the wave of progress are required to stay updated with all the latest developments, which is a difficult task for many reasons. First and foremost, it requires them to remain updated with the latest lingo as well as be aware of all the news, upcoming products and upcoming trends in an often-updated mobile web world. Additionally, mobile web optimization requires profound knowledge and understanding of that market because many limitations are stressed in mobile web development: the smaller screen size forces them to adapt the experience differently on the mobile web; different layouts are required since there are no tabs and windows in a mobile web browser; navigation is rather crippled compared to the common mouse-and-keyboard combo; lack of support for certain technologies; speed of access; size of the page; memory restrictions and many more…

On the other hand, mobile web experience offers new and exciting features such as touch interface, kinetic scrolling, and location awareness, among many others.

Taking all of the above issues into account, it is clear that a certain state of mind is required from a mobile web site developer to tackle such issues.

Mobile web – innovation at its fullest

So far, such adaptations for a mobile web site were conducted manually. Users were actually building two sets of pages, one for every platform. Otherwise, the use of scripts, so-called ‘browser hacks’ and techniques were required for a mobile website site. For example, a common practice is to build a script that detects the browser version and type, which then builds specific sets of CSS designs for each and finally merges it all together. Sometimes it worked, most of the time it didn’t. You can’t always assume that your user supports scripts, and not all browsers support CSS properly. So many things can go wrong. You wouldn’t leave things to chance when it comes to your business, would you?

Usually, most difficult tasks will get simplified over time. Let’s face it -people don’t like to work hard, and truth be told, they shouldn’t. A computer’s main purpose was to make life easier, and even though new developments come along with new complications, you can rest assured that the innovative mind will quickly come out with a solution. Parenthetically, the truly-innovative ideas provide solutions to problems you have yet to meet. Imagine being told 10 years ago that a major driving force in the industry will be a video-hosting website. Sounds far-fetched, right? Hosting videos seemed so minor back in the day… Now think of YouTube and see how they told everyone that they needed video hosting right away…

Mobile web – dive in, now

Take our word for it – you need a website tailored for mobile web handheld devices. If not now, then tomorrow. Next week though, your competitor may already see the need and take action, building a mobile website site, biting into your cake (or just taking it wholly, if you’re not there to fight for it).

The good news is that all of the hardships described above have been resolved successfully and packed into a mobile web application platform actually usable by everyone, with no prior knowledge required.

Our innovative product allows you to do all that without the hassle. Converting and creating new mobile web sites is a breeze, as our system guides you on every step of the way. Do not hesitate, begin now, and build your mobile web site, all free of charge!

Companies and organizations turn to governing boards for so many critical elements these days.

Boards of Directors guide overall strategy and direction. Appointed Audit Committees pore over corporate financials and performance. HR / Compensation Committees ensure the organization’s on track with hiring and benefits that keep it competitive. Each has been formed to inform, advice and support the CEO in his or her the ethical- and policy-backed pursuit of protecting shareholder / stakeholder interests.

Yet in the Age of Sarbanes Oxley-like governance across the organization, why doesn’t innovation have such oversight?

While attending the CEDEP ” Innovation-In -Action” this April at the Insead Business School’s Europe Campus in Fontainebleau, France, business leaders and top minds in innovation mulled the importance of creativity and new thinking in the organization. We discussed how innovation “tournaments” can drive critical thought, how capability-building drives ROI amid investable propositions, and how to create and nurture innovation champions from the bottom up who overcome organizational resistance.

At the CEDEP event, I spoke with Andrew Sleigh, the former group Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer with robotics and defense contractor QinetiQ, and an adjunct professor at London’s Imperial College. Andrew is a strong advocate of innovation governance. His beliefs in many ways mirror the 10 Imperatives in Robert’s Rules of Innovation that are required from a Governance perspective. Andrew espouses – among eight concepts, the value of innovation, skills assessments, and creating incentives to reward effective efforts.

Innovation Governance would require appropriate audit capabilities to measure outcomes, a board-level framework to ensure input and involvement, and explicit engagement with executives across the organization – just like any company or organization faces with SOX-type governance. A Chief Innovation Officer and or CEO would be getting board mental and policy backing.

Without this framework – and governance oversight, many innovation initiatives fail to take deep-seeded root within the organization.

The real issue boils down to the well-being of the organization – and the board’s willingness to create an environment that fosters sustainable health and continued growth. Governance with regard to innovation is more than just another committee. Competitive forces – especially in organizations that have been leaned-down, streamlined and fat-trimmed to the bone – beg the wise, thoughtful implementation of innovation. Assuming board members and executive leadership agree that we’ve lived through the decade of growth through Mergers & Acquisitions, and maxed out the value gained from lean manufacturing and operations, profitable growth drivers will have to be derived someplace else.

I would argue that well-considered innovation and related intellectual property will be the growth driver in the 21st Century. To make that happen, you need to elevate innovation higher than just the CEO or a C-level innovation exec. Beyond his or her required inspiration. It will have to encompass the entire C-Suite, the board – and the governance policies that guide them.

During the MacWorld Conference and Expo last January of 2008, Steve Jobs announced the launch of iTunes rentals and promised to be able to offer at the very least, 1,000 titles for consumers to rent by the end of February. And since February is over and coming in to mid-March, the number of titles tallies between 400 to 600 movies, and this is a big embarrassment to the Cupertino-based company.Apple CEO, Steve Jobs blames “those pesky studios and their rights agreements are once again the problem. Many of the movies Apple wants to offer on iTunes were released before Internet distribution was a possibility, meaning that download royalty agreements have to [be] signed between studios, actors, and copyright owners. As we’ve seen from the WGA strike, arguing about royalties tends to take time, but Apple is saying that the 1,000 titles will be available ‘soon.’”According to other news sources, the quality of audio and video doesn’t fit to what Jobs expects to offer to consumers of the iTunes store. Some HD movies don’t use Dolby Digital 5.1 and is quite disappointing.Apple Fans must not worry and would not wait in vain for the success to happen. It only takes time before the industry and the market adjusts to the business model of the iTunes store. Just like when the store started in 2003 where it measly offered 200,000 cuts but now has over 6 million songshttp://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080305/apple_tv_movies.html?.v=2http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/03/06/jobs-responds-to-itunes-movie-rentals-criticismhttp://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/03/04/movie-studios-could-be-behind-missing-itunes-rentals

Anti-virus software is a colossal industry; and for a good reason. Everyday hackers steal myriads of vital information losing companies and consumers’ time and money alike. Anti-virus software along with other programs are continually updated in preemptive attempts to thwart future cyber attacks.

Your computer may not be you’re only valuable at risk. A group of researchers from the Universities of California and Washington feel the auto industry in particular, is highly susceptible to cyber attacks. In fact, after a slew of controlled tests in which researcher attempted to cyber hack a few recently released vehicles, the findings were alarming.

Researchers who “cyber hacked” an array of vehicles found that with a little tweaking they were able to control many of the vehicles vital components. Even when the physical driver would attempt to intervene and manually gain control of the vehicle, the hackers were able to over ride the manual controls and in essence have the control of the drivers life.

Once given access to an on board diagnostic port installed for dealers to quickly access the vehicles computer, researchers were able to set up a wireless network in which they could send and receive the information needed to remotely access the vehicles. By flooding the vehicles system with packs of data, the researchers were shockingly able to map-out and manage many of the vehicles controls.

After an array of tests, researchers found that they were able to perform an assortment of tasks ranging from maintaining the volume of the radio to completely disabling the breaks at high speeds. The tests found holes in these systems highlighting the fact that there is in fact a huge potential window for cyber attacks.
The researchers found that hacking these complex vehicle computer systems was relatively easy in light of the fact that some vehicle systems can carry more complex computer code than a fighter jet. Researchers are hoping the public and media will find these results un-ignorable.

As vehicles get more and more autonomous, they naturally begin to rely more and more on their computer systems. As connectivity and the use of electronic data increases, the likelihood of hackers potentially attempting to enter vehicle systems drastically increases. With vehicles heavily relying on computer systems to function, the potential threat of a hacker becomes more and more a serious issue that could have vast detrimental consequences.

Due to the lack of efficiency in their computer systems, many auto manufactures have taken a plethora of bad media and lost a great deal of income due to the degradation in consumer trust and appeal. The fact that nearly half of all automotive warranty claims come from vehicle electronics systems already says a lot about the security and functionality of many of these vehicle computer systems. To add to the surmounting pressure of the volatility of vehicle systems, up to half the purchase cost attributed to many high end vehicles is directly accrued from purchasing these systems.

Researchers are hoping that by providing concrete evidence on how fragile these automotive computer systems actually are, the automotive industry and public alike will recognize the drastic need for IT and how it can help integrate up-to-date, safer systems. These aspirations for newer more secure systems aim is to provide increased safety, increased security, boost consumer trust and appeal, and to decrease maintenance and failure costs.

The world is constantly transforming due to the technological advances happening every day. As the world changes, industries, such as the automotive industry, must do everything possible to remain a lucrative business. Whether it is reducing emissions, meeting governmental safety regulations, or keeping your vehicles data system secure, there is always something new for the pack to chase.

An historic name in software will effectively pass into history in February as AOL discontinues development and active support for the Netscape browser, according to an official blog.AOL will keep delivering security patches for the current version of Netscape until Feb. 1, 2008, after which it will no longer provide active support for any version of the software, according to a Friday entry on The Netscape Blog by Tom Drapeau, lead developer for Netscape.com. The Netscape.com Web site will remain as a general-purpose portal. Read the rest of this entry »

Logo designs’ significance is discussed various times, how it helps in identifying your business, how it smiles at your prospects, how it talks to your clients, how it generates the concept and bring life to your business. I know, you know it very well.

You must have gone through the above holiday logos sticking to the Google home page through out the year. The 34 beautifully designed enriched with concept ingredients Holidays logos have been displayed in the year 2010.

Question is why people need to have holidays logo in their websites. Why thousands of graphic designers are busy in designing holidays event in the logo form. Do they want to convey any kind of message by Holidays logo? Does it help business to pick a grip of development? Here are the answers why you have to have Holidays logo at your online door. Why Do Holidays logos have such importance?

Innovation

People get bored while seeing old boring and dull logos (they become like that after some time), so there is a need of eye-soothing and up-to-date Custom Logo Design that psychologically provide users a comfortable visit to your site. If you value your customers, you need to take care of their needs and problems.

Cultural Festivity

There are several events that connect group of people or society at the country or even at the global platform, cultural and religious festivals like Halloween, summer, Christmas etc which bind people from different geographical location and provide the unanimous celebrations. So when you value people from different backgrounds, you are expanding your business globally. Thus, holiday Logo Designs do.

Promotion

Connecting with different people, celebrating diversifying events, giving value to various religions, going hand with hand with the common people is actually promoting your business implicitly and it has much greater influence then any other promotional package. You actually make them realize that you are there with their happy time. You tell them that we are happy when you clap on the new-year occasion. We wear horror masks too when its Halloween night. So get set go for the next holiday and tell them that if they are happy, you are too.

So, the previous article that I wrote was kind of an introduction for the topic that I will do for the month of February, I tackled the first pro of the Apple TV which is the availability of movies and the huge amount of movies available for renting.Now, I will go on discussing the other side of the coin. The main problem or the huge turn off when it comes to renting these videos is the time limit for the consumer to watch it. You are only given 24 hours to watch it, but the thing is, not all consumers watch a film from start to finish. And especially the viewing behaviour of children where they watch a single movie over and over and over again for like a couple of months until they have memorized the whole script and their songs, and even their dance steps. But, blame should not be put on Apple, but on the movie studios that made this decision. Tsk.

The Windows VPS hosting solutions have made it much easier for website and software developers alike. These plans have made it easier in the areas of cost effectiveness, application installation and server control. There are very few technical differences between a virtual server and a dedicated server, while there is a large difference in price. VPS hosting solutions have become the most popular hosting solution in recent times because of these reasons.

Cost Effectiveness

As stated before, today’s virtual servers offer almost all of the benefits that dedicated servers do. You must purchase a physical system to run your websites on a dedicated server, whereas there is no need for physical equipment with a virtual private server. Webmasters and software developers prefer virtual servers because the dedicated server systems are expensive to buy. They are still able to customize their applications because virtual servers allow them to access any previously stored computer resources.

Convenience

Having a Windows VPS hosting account makes the whole server process a lot more convenient. Depending on the host you choose, your virtual server can be managed and closely watching by the host company. Most companies offer burstable RAM, which makes it more convenient for webmasters and software developers to complete smaller tasks. The resource capacity on your server will be managed by your host and you will be notified if you need to upgrade to a higher usage account.

Unlimited Program Usage

Many developers use different programs to create software. A shared server puts limits on the applications that can be used on the server. On the other hand, any application (as long as it is legal) is allowed to be used with a Windows VPS hosting account. If need be, developers can even combine different applications on the server. This flexibility gives developers and webmasters so much more leeway in their creations. Open source applications are another perk of Windows VPS hosting. These applications are offered for free, as opposed to high costing proprietary applications.

“Above all, we know that an entrepreneurial strategy has more chance of success the more it starts with the users — their utilities, their values, their realities … the test of an innovation is always what it does for the user…it is by no means hunch or gamble. But it is also not precisely science. Rather, it is judgment.” — Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Just because a company is spending money on research (such as markets, customers, or new technologies) and development doesn’t mean they will get innovation. Innovation, as with advertising, training, or many other organization investments, depends on the quality of the investment as much as the quantity of resources put in it. A high proportion of innovative new products, services, and companies flop. That’s often because managers build better mousetraps without first making sure there are any mice out there. Or that people still want to catch them.

Many innovations come from a deeper level of customer and market understanding. They go beyond what current customers say they need. They solve problems that customers either don’t realize they have or didn’t know could be solved. These innovations create needs and performance gaps only once customers start using them and get turned on to the possibilities.

Every product and service we now take for granted was once silly, interesting, or just an odd curiosity. What would we have said to a market researcher asking about a video machine for our TV when there were few movies to rent? How about CD players when there were no CDs to buy? What about a bankcard to withdraw cash from an ATM? How about a personal computer? In the fifties, how highly would we have rated the need for jet planes when our business was conducted within a few hundred-mile radius of our office?

These are a few examples of the thousands of innovations that customer or market research and competitive benchmarking would never have identified a need for. The companies who pioneered these sorts of innovative breakthroughs had years of spectacular revenue growth and market leadership.

Walking in Our Customer’s Shoes

“The need for innovation on an unprecedented scale is a given. The question is how. It seems that giving the market free rein, inside and outside the firm, is the best — perhaps the only — satisfactory answer.” — Tom Peters, Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties

Innovation is a hands-on issue. It calls for an intimate understanding of our current customers and markets, potential new customers or markets, team and organization competencies and improvement opportunities, vision, values, and mission. We can’t develop that intimacy from a distance. Studies, reports, surveys, graphs, and measurements wouldn’t do it.

Effective innovation depends on disciplined management systems and processes. But it starts with people. People searching for creative ways to do things better, different, or more effectively. People trying to understand how other people use, or could use, the products or services their organization could produce. That makes innovation a leadership issue.

Beyond the management tools of surveys, focus groups, and the like, innovation leaders find a multitude of ways to live in their customers’ world. They’re learning how to learn from the market, not just market research. Innovation leaders look for ways to align the organization’s product and service development competencies with latent or unexpressed market and customer needs. Since customers don’t know what’s possible, they often can’t identify innovations that break with familiar patterns.

At the other extreme, leaders recognize that their organizations are constantly in danger of developing products and services with little or no market appeal. So many new (or extended) products and services come from empathic innovation. These are innovations that flow from a deep empathy and understanding of the intended customers’ problems and aspirations.

Through living in and empathizing with their customers’ world, innovation leaders focus their organization’s development capabilities on solving problems or meeting needs that customers may not realize could be done.

As my first consulting company, The Achieve Group, was working with current and prospective Clients to move beyond the training field to organization improvement, we stumbled across the need for senior management education, strategy formulation, and implementation planning sessions. This came from working closely with Clients struggling to get people in their organization trained and using new approaches to customer service, quality improvement, and teams. It became clear that how the senior management group pulled everything together and led the effort was the key stumbling block or stepping stone to the whole effort. After experiments, pilots, and few failures, Achieve’s highly successful executive retreat process evolved and developed to meet a need no one had anticipated.

The word innovation appears frequently in advertisements, positioning statements, branding, marketing, mission statements and is used by most businesses and organizations in some fashion or form. But the question is how many businesses and organizations really make innovation a top priority? And how many businesses and organizations are truly good at innovation? One recent AMA/HRI study found that although most organizations say that innovation is a top priority, few companies are actually good at it.

Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach wants to know whether you have been asked and tasked to innovate within your company or organization? And the follow-up question is are you having difficulty getting started and achieving results? I suspect that many readers of this article have experienced or witnessed that one of the biggest issues with innovation is that they really are not sure just where to start. So, with that in mind, Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach offers the following list of twenty (20) tips to inspire and initiate innovation for you and your business.

Innovation Tip #1: Develop a clearly defined and focused vision for innovation within your business.

Innovation Tip #2: Develop a set of measurable goals that will clearly define what you want and need to get out of innovation.

Innovation Tip #3: Develop a system for tracking and managing innovation.

Innovation Tip #4: Develop and implement a forum for sharing. Promote the open exchange of ideas and collaboration among your co-workers and team members. The forum could be face-to-face meetings or dong so online with message boards or blogs.

Innovation Tip #5: Engage the powerful technique of brainstorming. The power of brainstorming enables you to address a business challenge, issue or opportunity and is effective because it sets no boundaries and allows people to say whatever they want.

Innovation Tip #6: Consider establishing an Innovation Team whose priority is ensuring that innovation is a priority and that there is a clearly defined and focused effort to achieve innovation in your business.

Innovation Tip #7: Research what others, outside your organization, do to initiate & inspire innovation. Set a goal to identify 3 or 4 organizations that are very innovative and then request visits to those companies to gain new perspectives on innovation.?

Innovation Tip #8: Commit to personally doing something different from your ordinary routine. For example: try a new coffee house for your morning coffee; take a different route to work; try a new menu item; or anything that you would not typically do on a daily basis.

Innovation Tip #9: Find a business coach or mentor and learn something from them.

Innovation Tip #10: Develop a proactive approach to generating new ideas. Create a list of questions/challenges you can pose to your team. This will enable you to make innovation specific and proactive and consequently have it achieve more Top Of Mind Awareness (TOMA) and yield more strategically relevant ideas.?

Innovation Tip #11: Create some momentum for innovation in your business by selecting and committing to a project that will result in a “quick win” and will provide confirmation that innovation does produce positive results.

Innovation Tip #12: Create a sense of urgency by setting an aggressive timetable for a project.

Innovation Tip #13: Reward creativity and innovation in personal and creative ways. Develop rewards that will appeal personally to an individual’s interests and values.

Innovation Tip #14: Create and foster an environment that is fun and challenging. Creative people have tendencies toward being irreverent and like to have fun.

Innovation Tip #15: Break down individual isolation and create opportunities for people to bounce ideas off of each other. Encourage (or force if necessary), people out of their workstations and offices to meet in small groups to discuss challenges, issues, trends, opportunities and threats, etc.

Innovation Tip #16: Breakdown hierarchy and emphasize and reward creative and innovative ideas regardless of where they come from in your business.

Innovation Tip #17: Create an environment that will allow everyone to speak freely when working with his or her teams.

Innovation Tip #18: Aim for simplicity so that the innovative ideas are easy to understand, easy to explain to others and relatively easy to implement.

Innovation Tip #19: Focus on the action or the experience and use verbs rather than nouns (e.g. “teach people to think strategically” rather than “strategic thinking education”).

Innovation Tip #20: Adopt an attitude that you will view mistakes and failures as great learning opportunities and blessings in disguise.