The next generation of Conduct’s favourite tablet has now been officially launched by Steve Jobs himself. The Apple iPad 2 brings some amazning new features, functionality and design updates that are sure to impress you. Not only is the iPad 2 lighter and thinner than it’s predecessor it also offers a powerful dual-core A5 chip , smart cover, dual HD cameras and bundled applications like Garage Band! Don’t just take my word for it! Watch the video.
When is it coming to Australia and how much will it be?
As far as we can tell, Australians will only have to wait a fortnight after the U.S release of the iPad 2 for the new tablet to go on sale in Australia, with the device release date on Friday March 25.
As far as pricing goes, there have been no indications of how much this new device will cost to Australians but in the U.S a 16GB basic model will cost $US499, the 32GB version will be $US599 and the 64GB version will be $US699. The same options with 3G added will cost $US629, $US729 and $US829 respectively. By the looks of this, we could expect that the iPad 2 will be priced very close, if not exactly, to the original iPad also meaning that buyers will be able to pick up an original iPad far cheaper after the release of the iPad 2.
Sounds good, where can I place my order?
Well unfortunately unlike in the past, Apple isn’t offering any “pre-orders” for the iPad 2 just yet. You can give your details to Apple to receive a notification for when you will be able to “pre-order” but it seems like the quickest way to get a new iPad 2 will be to buy one from an Apple retail store.
The Catholic Church has approved an iPhone app that helps guide worshippers through confession.
Confession, created by an Indiana-based company Little iApps, has gone on sale through iTunes for $1.99. It is thought to be the first time the church has approved a mobile phone application, although it is not entirely unfamiliar with the digital world, already boasting a YouTube channel.
Its developer, Patrick Leinen, said the app was designed to be used in the confessional and was intended “for those who frequent the sacrament and those who wish to return”.
The app guides users through the sacrament process and offers sin tracking functionality as well. In addition, users can examine their conscience based on personalised factors such as age, sex and marital status and have their own password protected customised profiles and list of acts of contrition.
The firm said the app was developed with assistance from several priests and had been given the church’s imprimatur by Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne in Indiana. The app was developed not to replace traditional confession entirely but rather to encourage users to understand their actions and then visit their priest for absolution.
The launch comes shortly after Pope Benedict XVI gave his World Communications Address on 24 January, urging Christians to embrace digital communication and make their presence felt online.
Android 3.0 Honeycomb is Google’s upcoming version of Android for tablet devices, aimed to compete directly with Apple’s iOS and iPad.
According to Google, Android’s existing features have taken a big step forward in Honeycomb: refined multi-tasking, elegant notifications, access to over 100,000 apps on Android Market, home screen customization with a new 3D experience and redesigned widgets that are richer and more interactive. On top of these, there have also been some powerful upgrades to the web browser, including tabbed browsing, form auto-fill, syncing with your Google Chrome bookmarks, and incognito mode for private browsing.
Honeycomb also features the latest Google Mobile innovations including Google Maps 5 with 3D interactions and offline reliability, access to over 3 million Google eBooks, and Google Talk, which now allows you to video and voice chat with any other Google Talk enabled device (PC, tablet, etc).
The team here at Conduct are very excited with these first impressions and can’t wait to see this new release in action!
According to an internal analysis of their mobile search query data, Microsoft has discovered that 53 percent of all mobile search through Bing has a location related intention. Couple this with Google’s more moderate claim that 20 percent of search is related to location and you have a statistic that presents some real implications.
“53 % of mobile search on Bing has a local intent”
As someone who uses a smartphone for searching myself, these figures come as no surprise. Mobile users are often searching based on their immediate interests and needs, as opposed to someone searching on desktop or laptop. This is because they are often using their devices and mobile search capability to navigate, literally and figuratively, through the physical world. The ability to be online and continue through the daily motions of the real world at the same time means that people can easily find information or assistance to help with real-time decisions. This could be finding directions and travel times, researching and comparing a product you see in a store front, or just looking for somewhere nearby to eat lunch.
The implications for businesses is how to harness this shift to benefit themselves and keep up with others. Having cross platform capabilities has never been so important, especially with the tablet market set to boom and mobile advertising being pushed to millions.
If you have recently logged into your Twitter account you may have noticed an option to try out the new Twitter design. There has been a lot of hype around the much anticipated make over for the popular social application and now that it has finally arrived it seems that it was all worthwhile. The whole redesign clearly has taken a user-centric approach with a bunch of added functionality and interface elements that make handling your Twitter activity more intuitive and enjoyable. It cleverly incorporates common user actions and new functions with current design trends to deliver the type of web app that many of its users have been yearning.
The new design was based on the confusing Golden Ratio design technique. Some of these great features that you may notice include a new tabbed navigation, comprehensive sidebar panel, integrated media content, new follow and unfollow capability, beautiful new design elements and even a new favicon, to name a few.
It appears that Twitter has taken some strong design and functionality concepts from the many great desktop apps and other third party Twitter apps out there and incorporated into its core product. This has been coupled with an intensive promotional build up and a re-branding and relaunch of the new and improved web app. Has it worked? Well, Twitter has recorded a massive 30 million user sign up in the last 2 months alone.
The team here at Conduct all agree that this a great step for Twitter and have been enjoying this new make over. We recommend giving it a look and just in case you don’t like the new design, don’t worry because you can revert back to the old twitter.
That’s the new tag line for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9, which released a public beta version in early September. We have been playing with this latest release from Microsoft and are pleasantly surprised at some of the great features that it brings, given Internet Explorer’s track record.
Some of these features include: better tab functionality, a lean interface, site pinning functionality, a huge performance boost with it’s GPU acceleration, updated Javascript engine,a download manager and of course HTML5/CSS3/SVG2 support. This is a massive leap forward for Internet Explorer and definately worth checking out, but will it steal support for the likes of Firefox, Safari and Chrome amongst the web design/development community? Time will tell but I doubt it!
Earlier this month Google and Verizon posted their collaborative proposal for an open Internet. The two major players have put their differences aside to collaborate again for the greater good. The proposal comes in response to a recent court ruling asserting that the FCC lacks the authority to impose net neutrality, something that Google and Verizon had been pushing along with several other corporate bodies.
In a nutshell, the new proposal is somewhat more of a compromise trying to achieve some desirable outcome for all parties involved. Firstly, both firms still believe that web users are entitled to choose what content, applications, or devices they consume on the Internet. Secondly, both firms want enforceable probation against discriminatory practices such as prioritisation (including paid prioritisation) and the blocking of Internet traffic. Thirdly, both Google and Verizon agreed that fewer restrictions within the wireless Internet space would be necessary with concerns that any ‘red tape’ could hinder this competitive environment, for the time being at least.
Keen to shift some of the authority back to the FCC, the proposal also states that, if passed into law, ISPs would be held accountable for breaking any of the ‘open Internet’ stipulations to the tune of up to $2 million. This means that the FCC would play a more regulatory role with the ability to fine “bad actors”, as the proposal puts it, for playing up. It’s also not a surprise to see that both Google and Verizon expressed their avid support for the National Broadband Plan to replace the existing assortment of network infrastructure. The questions is – with the latest election leaving everyone up in the air just how sweet a deal will the National Broadband Plan be for our industry?
The most highly-anticipated open source upgrade of the year Wordpress 3.0 is finally here and it brings some amazing new features and updates. On June 17, 2010, WordPress Version 3.0, named Thelonious, was released to the public for all to enjoy. This new release is packed with tons of exciting features, like custom post types, better menu management, editor styles, merging of Wordpress MU into the core and many more. It also comes with a new default theme – TwentyTen, that is compatible with most of the new features. All in all, a very exciting update packed with real value-adding features. It’s amazing to see how far Wordpress has come along and what potentially lies in the future. With over 10.3 million downloads of version 2.9, there is no doubt that the growing community of WordPress advocates is helping drive the continued development of this beautiful open source platform.
You can now download the latest stable version. For more information on this enhancement and bug-fix release, read the WordPress Blog and see the Changelog for 3.0. In the meantime, check out this video explaining some the new features better than I ever could. Enjoy!
As smart phones continue to become ever more popular and powerful, businesses looking to engage in future markets can no longer ignore the potential that the mobile platform has to offer. Increasingly, we are seeing mobile devices playing a key role in people’s everyday lives from social media use, mobile commerce (aka m-commerce), research, gaming, photos and so on. In fact with thousands of applications readily available, there is not much a smart phone can’t do these days but let’s not forget to add ‘good old’ calling and texting too.You might be thinking that it’s just kids using this technology, it’s not everybody is using it. Research has found that generation X and baby boomers alike are increasingly using mobile phones.
What’s geo-location?
Geo-location, also called geo-tagging, is the practice of associating a digital resource with a physical location. In plain English this means attaching real-world locations to digital technology such as the Internet, laptops and mobile phones. This technology has many applications but its use for helping mobile social networks enrich social networking is what we are interested in. Location-based social networking has taken off. This type of social networking allows members of communities to share their location through GPS, mobile email or text. Users can add comments about a venue, share and find locations with friends, invite friends to meet up, receive rewards and push all this and more capability with popular applications like Facebook and Twitter. Although there are many location-based social networks out there that differentiate in their services, the major contenders work with a system similar to this. Some popular ones that you may have heard of or are using yourself include Foursquare, Gowalla, Rummble, Where, Loopt and Brightkite to name a few.
Ok, so what does this mean for small businesses? The growing number of online geo-location platforms presents an excellent opportunity for small businesses to increase their local audience and market reach. Geo-location platforms are fast becoming more popular and predicted to be a major player in the social media spectrum. Early adopters are giving themselves a head start for when the masses catch onto using them, especially for small to medium businesses. Whether you like it or not your business will most likely be affected in one way or another by the movement toward the mobile environment for business. Getting started now means you can comfortably establish yourself and deliver that capability that will sooner or later be expected from your customers. So the question is! Are you ready to address that capability? Here are a few steps that may help your business get started:
Research
Do your homework on the various geo-location platforms available out there and become familiar with them. Spend some time determining which platforms are popular in your area and what they’re all about by signing up to your own personal accounts and using them, asking others and doing some online reading.
Get started
Once you feel comfortable with what these various platforms are about, you should take an initial step into actually using these platforms for your business. An obvious start is to make sure your business is firstly discoverable on these platforms. To take advantage of the early adopters to this type of social networking start practically using these platforms to start realising the benefits your customers and your business can achieve. Don’t be intimidated to start using these platforms as soon as possible and you may become an experienced user in your area or industry that others will want to follow.
Get others started
Put a plan in action to encourage others to start using the platforms that you are discoverable on. You can target your existing and potential customers by making them aware through already existing or new marketing channels. This could be as simple as telling customers walking through your door to more complex campaigns that may involve anything from commercials, posters, viral marketing, emails and even other social media channels like Twitter and Facebook. The trick here is to find a way that most effectively lets people know about your geo-location capability and more importantly how it will benefit them.
Make it work for your business
As you continue to engage more customers it’s important to gain a firmer grip on managing these types of platforms so that they deliver real benefits to your customers. Start utilising promotions, incentives, loyalty programs and special offers for those customers using geo-location to connect with your business. Your business will only get as much value out of geo-location as you put into it.
Monitor and Improve
Like many social media platforms, monitoring can be difficult but not impossible. How and why you measure your geo-location efforts depends on your goals but really it should focus on improving how you use the platform with the ultimate goal of interacting with your customers, building relationships and creating enjoyable experiences. Even though social media is a very powerful marketing tool don’t forget to have some fun.
Stay tuned for my next blog about social media monitoring and some of the tricks and tools your business can employ in this area.
Conduct had the pleasure of attending the MoMoMay event last night, held in Melbourne. We were delighted to see our friends WSP and jTribe showcasing their latest work and offering an invaluable educational session focused on how to successfully manage mobile app development from start to finish.
We all agreed that the event delivered a great insight into new media. WSP and jTribe conducted an excellent question and answer session that gave the audience an opportunity to engage on a very personal level on areas of particular interest.
We were very excited to attend this event and enjoyed seeing a mutual passion in this area.
Key elements that where highlighted and what we also recommend to potential clients.
Have a business plan and road map. Treat the application as a business, it has to make money, work out who your target market is and what are the short term and long term goals.
Create a set of wireframes and list of functions. This will help you nut out the application functionality and will potentially save you some money from having someone to do it for you.
Seek investment from the developer or a third party. If your finding it hard to raise the capital use the business plan and wireframes as leverage to get people excited about the idea and to get involved.
Seek government grant funding. You would be surprised how much funding there is for new media development. There are a range of prototype and innovation grants. Film Victoria is a great place to start.
Conduct were also recently engaged by Stuart Campbell, the creator of the online comic book Nawlz (Recent NEWTART Webby award winner 2010) to help apply for prototype funding with Film Vitoria.
If you feel you have a strong concept and idea feel free to contact us. The Hidden Park is a perfect example of Conduct helping a client build their idea and make it a successful commercial product available on the app store.
Earlier this month 
As smart phones continue to become ever more popular and powerful, businesses looking to engage in future markets can no longer ignore the potential that the mobile platform has to offer. Increasingly, we are seeing mobile devices playing a key role in people’s everyday lives from social media use, mobile commerce (aka 
Conduct had the pleasure of attending the