Mobile

Michael Assad, the CEO and a co-founder of Agility, must have been one busy man with a video camera during this year's SXSW. Michael was able to interview a number of leaders in the Web publishing industry including people working for such groups as Time Inc., Hearst, BBC, the New York Times, and Al Jazeera.

My two favorite interviews includes Michael's interview with Perry Solomon from Time Inc and his interview with Bill Adair from PolitiFact. One of my long standing criticisms of traditional media has been their lack of enthusiasm in embracing digital media. As a blogger, I tend to think that perhaps they "just don't get it" but such an argument would not be honest nor truthful. There are major players in the publishing industry that have known for decades that digital publishing needed to be a part of their business model. That iPad you're using wouldn't have been possible without the amount of brain storming provided years prior by these publishers.

Given one reason or another though, publishers until recently have been slow to deliver their content in the multiple formats and the mediums we prefer. As skilled as the publishing industry may be for delivering digital content their achilles heel has been unwillingness to take necessary risks. That's why this is great video footage from Michael as they show the print industry is now ready to fullly evolve and allow the digital publishing business take to be fully integrated with traditional print. At least that's what I take away from these videos.

New mobile features help customers tap into “responsive design” techniques; creating websites that fluidly adapt to any screen size (smartphones, tablets, desktops and more).

WALTHAM, MA, March 5, 2012 – Telerik, an end-to-end provider of software application, lifecycle and content management solutions, today revealed the latest release of Telerik’s Sitefinity, its award-winning ASP.NET Content Management System (CMS). Sitefinity 5.0 continues to advance the benefits provided to developers, marketing end-users and IT managers.

This release delivers enhanced mobile features to manage web content uniquely adapting it to display appropriately on desktops, tablets and smartphones. Out-of-the-box, Sitefinity 5.0 integrates a responsive design approach that empowers a marketing end-user to define rule-based webpages that dynamically adapt to different size screens.  No more updates of multiple content versions of the same website or “exception” only coding is required by a developer.

DotNetNuke Corp. has announced the immediate availability of DotNetNuke version 6.1 which makes it fast and easy for organizations of all sizes to deliver tailored online experiences for thousands of unique mobile devices.   For the first time, DNN 6.1 also provides a site group capability, which dramatically simplifies and speeds up the management of permissions and profiles across multiple desktop and mobile websites.

Integration between Hippo and PugPig provides a powerful and easy framework for managing and publishing to iOS-Powered Mobile Devices.

There are a lot of stories this week of the old-guard tech companies moving toward software and social media as the solution to their problems. We're well aware of HP discussing their desire to get out of the PC market (which I think is a mistake) and even Cisco is looking at collaboration software as a forward moving solution.

Back in December I participated in a podcast with Alan Shimel from Network World where I was also joined by Kathleen Reidy, Senior Analyst from The 451 Group and Todd Barr, Chief Marketing Officer for Alfresco. The topic of the podcast was “Open Source CMS” but we also talked about “crystal ball” predictions for the CMS market in general for 2011. In the podcast, I mentioned that from DotNetNuke’s perspective, innovation in the content management market in the coming years will all be centered around 3 major disruptive industry trends…Cloud, Mobile, and Social.

Bitrix, Inc., a technology trendsetter in business communications solutions, announces the release of Bitrix Site Manager 10.0, a version that includes 10 new weapons in the web and mobile-development arsenal, significant changes in the licensing policies of the product and a brand new module for senior editions.

Ten new technologies and tools are incorporated into Version 10.0 including:

1. BitrixMobile: for development of mobile sites and apps with support of iOS, Android and BlackBerry OS on the basis of HTML5
2. A ready-made mobile internet shop, created with BitrixMobile technology and an application for one-time passwords (OTP)
3. Web clusters, a complex solution for scalability and reliability of an entire web project (database, search module, etc.), can be applied in high availability (HA) or high performance (HP) configurations
4. Integration with social networks including Facebook, Twitter and Google
5. Sticky web-it notes for simplifying collaborative work in web project creation and content management
6. Instant search with query suggestion
7. Support of SKU in the e-commerce module
8. Rating and influence systems in the social networking module
9. A ready-made InfoPortal for municipalities and media outlets
10. A "Live session" feature, providing a more convenient experience to the daily user
    

A few days ago, I read Mary Jo Foley's article titled Microsoft: Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted. According to an interview with the President of the Server and Tools Division at Microsoft, the company will be shifting support for Silverlight away from the PC and Mac desktop and toward the phone market.

So what’s a developer to make of Microsoft’s messaging (or lack thereof) about Silverlight at its premiere developer conference?

I asked Bob Muglia, the Microsoft President in charge of the company’s server and tools business, that very question and got what I consider to be the clearest answer yet about how Microsoft is evolving its Silverlight strategy.

“Silverlight is our development platform for Windows Phone,” he said. Silverlight also has some “sweet spots” in media and line-of-business applications, he said.

But when it comes to touting Silverlight as Microsoft’s vehicle for delivering a cross-platform runtime, “our strategy has shifted,” Muglia told me.

Microsoft plans to be using HTML 5 to replace the functions currently being provided by Silverlight 5.

It is not the point of this post to debate the merits of HTML 5, Silverlight and even Flash. What is my point though, is that Microsoft appears to me to be desperate. Desperate to come up with a strategic plan that will carry them beyond the day of Windows PCs. Microsoft is desperate to become innovative for the sake of innovation that they're really confusing a lot of their developers. If only after a few years of support, Microsoft is shifting focus of it's Silverlight platform...what potential developer in his or her right mind would support another future Microsoft endeavor? Just take a look at the comments to Bob Muglia's blog post discussing this topic and I think you'll see my point.

Not having the opportunity to own an iPhone due to lack of coverage by phone carrier AT&T, I haven't been a smartphone user. Then a few weeks ago my carrier, Verizon, introduced the Motorola Droid and I purchased my first smartphone.  Since then, I've been carrying the Droid where ever I go and taking full advantage of the phone's features.

I was reading an article this morning regarding the use of ARM-based chips in a number of devices including "smartbooks". It appears the industry would like you to now call those smaller and less powerful laptop computers a smartbook instead of netbook.

To describe these devices as a smartbook is idiotic marketing for two reasons. First, "netbook" is a term that has been around for two years and most people today recognize the term being applied to smaller sized notebooks. When you hear the question, "What is a smartbook?" it seems very natural to just answer by replying, "a smartbook is a netbook". Secondly, I have to say it's very moronic (worse than ironic) to call a dumbed-down notebook a smartbook. At least when you say "smartphone" it is in reference to increased functionality over the traditional mobile phone and not less functionality.

I do not like the word "smart" being attached to devices and applications that are far from actually being intelligent on their own. Is marketing that insecure in the devices they're selling that they need to attach the word "smart" to cover up their own lack of intelligence? I have a theory that any time we attach the word "smart" to software or devices it is inviting doom into our lives.