M-Commerce explained + Magento Mobile, MobiCart and Square!

Simon
1
2nd July

M-Commerce has been defined as the “use of hand-held wireless devices to communicate, interact, and transact via high-speed connection to the Internet.” With the release of devices like the iPad, iPhone and Android platform M-Commerce is enabling consumers to access banking accounts and pay bills, receive stock quotes and initiate buy/sell transactions, or receive special promotions and generate orders from any place at any time.

From a survey done in April 2010, MMA (The Mobile Marketing Association) have concluded that one out of five U.S. mobile phone owners have used their cell phone for M-Commerce.

Here are a few likely types of M-Commerce tipped to emerge.

  • Business to Business -- Electronic transactions that are conducted as part of trading, for example, the payment for the supply of goods between a producer and a wholesaler.
  • Business to Consumer -- Involves businesses selling their goods and services directly to consumers.
  • Consumer to Consumer -- Such as auctions and classified ad purchases.

Below is a list of new and exciting technology and products set to make a mark on M-Commerce. We are particularly interested in Magento Mobile…

Magento Mobile

Magento are set to again revolutionise electronic commerce with the introduction of Magento Mobile. As stated on the Magento site -- “With Magento mobile, you can easily create branded, native storefront applications that are deeply integrated with Magento’s market-leading eCommerce platform.” This is definitely worth keeping an ear to the ground and registering for the limited release beta.

Mobicart

Mobicart is a free and simple way for you to build and manage your very own iPhone, iPad and Android mobile e-commerce shop.

Fully customisable -- It’s your own shop with your own brand.

Did we mention it’s FREE? - That’s right, MobiCart will be free so anyone can build and deploy their very own M-Commerce shop.

Update your app from anywhere -- MobiCart is web based so you can update your shop from anywhere.

iPhone, iPad & Android friendly -- Manage multiple devices from one easy to use platform.

A developers dream! -- With the open API, MobiCart will be a developers dream.

Square

Square comes with a peripheral credit card swiper that lets any store or business person take credit card (or cash) payments on iPhones, and now, iPads. It takes finger signatures on the touchscreen, generates email or SMS receipts, calculates sales tax, and comes with an online accounting dashboard to keep track of sales.

Tags: , , , ,
1 Comment
Categories: Marketing, Mobiles, Technology, eCommerce

Wordpress 3.0 is Here!

Nick
0
25th June

wordpress-iconThe 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!

Tags: , ,
0 Comments
Categories: Industry Trends, Technology, WordPress

Apple iAd is on our Doorsteps

Nick
0
23rd June

Apple iAd iconBundled together with their latest release of the iPhone 4, Apple has also unveiled the iAd platform. Set for release on July 1st, Apple’s plans for in-app ads are stirring the pot. In practical terms, this means interactive and video content ads are going to be served up without people leaving apps and therefore being able to return to their app at any time by closing out the ad. According to Jobs, the type of ads you’re going to see will be different, ideally hitting the intersection of emotion and interactivity. Since the average person spends 30 minutes inside apps per day, Jobs figures, one ad every three minutes would lead to 1 billion ad impressions per day over Apple’s 100 million devices.

This release comes as no shock to the system as early signs of such a platform being developed from Apple were evident. In fact, Apple’s been considering mobile advertising as early as January with its acquisition of worldwide mobile ad agency Quattro. Apple also started clearing the path for itself by warning off developers from apps that use location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location. Apple’s recent presence in the mobile display advertising space has led to an increased estimate for the market. It is now expected mobile ads – both in applications and on the mobile Web – will top $1 billion in 2012. Of course Apple are set to be leading the pack in this space. Like they have done so many times before, Apple has trailblazed a path for many to follow them. The question — how will you and your business make use of this exciting new platform?

For more reading check out the offical Apple iAd Debut press release.
Bundled together with their latest release of the iPhone 4, Apple has also unveiled the iAd platform. Set for release on July 1st, Apple’s plans for in-app ads are stirring the pot. In practical terms, this means interactive and video content ads are going to be served up without people leaving apps and therefore being able to return to their app at any time by closing out the ad. According to Jobs, the type of ads you’re going to see will be different, ideally hitting the intersection of emotion and interactivity.

Since the average person spends 30 minutes inside apps per day, Jobs figures, one ad every three minutes would lead to 1 billion ad impressions per day over Apple’s 100 million devices. This release comes as no shock to the system as early signs of such a platform being developed from Apple were evident. In fact, Apple’s been eying mobile advertising ever since as early as January with its acquisition of worldwide mobile ad agency Quattro. Apple also started clearing the path for itself by warning off developers from apps that use location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location.

Apple’s recent presence in the mobile display advertising space has led to an increased estimate for the market. It is now expected mobile ads – both in applications and on the mobile Web- will top $1 billion in 2012. Of course, Apple will be a dominate player in this space but, like they have done so many times before, Apple will lead the many that will follow.

Tags: ,
0 Comments
Categories: Business, Marketing, Mobiles, Technology

Meet iPhone 4

Simon
0
8th June

After all the hype and web banter about the new iPhone we can officially report it has now been released and scheduled to be available in July for us Australians. There are two models the 16GB and the 32GB. Some of the features we are excited about include the Apple A4 processor, app multitasking, 7 hours of talk time, a backlit 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash and 720p video recording (and iMovie), a front-facing camera for FaceTime video calls, an eye-burning 960 x 640 Retina display, an all glass and stainless steel body… and all this squashed into a 9.3 mm thick design.

Tags: , ,
0 Comments
Categories: Innovation, Mobiles, Technology

Conduct’s top 10 WordPress must have plug-ins!

Simon
0
18th May

If you don’t already know by now Conduct is a massive fan and advocate of the all mighty WordPress. Simply put – we love it!

I have compiled a very concise list of must have plug-ins that we install on almost all of our WordPress sites. These plug-ins enhance various aspects of WordPress like the pagination, SEO and user experience.

1. Improve your pagination:

Improve the pagination on both pages and posts – WP-PageNavi. We love this plug-in because it is beautifully written and just works.

2. Quick PNG fix for the dreaded IE6 browser:

As a thorn in every web developers back – IE6 still ranks in browser statistics and thus sites ’should’ be compatible. HITS- IE6 PNGFix takes out some of the pain when applying the infamous png fix. We select the DD_belatedPNG script inside the options section of this plug-in.

3. Easy to install breadcrumbs:

Display breadcrumbs on pages and posts. Breadcrumb NavXT is an easy to use plug-in that requires you to add a small piece of code in your templates. The options are plentiful and the results are great.

4. Create great looking forms with ease and simplicity:

cforms II does all the heavy lifting when adding forms to your WordPress site. You have a plethora of style options and functionality settings including attachments, date picker, auto-responders – to name only a few.

5. SEO at your finger tips:

It doesn’t take a genius to work out why All in One SEO Pack is a must have plug-in. This plug-in reduces the time and effort required to optimise your WordPress site.

6. Mobile compatibility please:

WPtouch iPhone Theme is an easy to install and customise theme specifically designed for mobile devices like the iPhone, blackberry and android. Let’s face it, it won’t be too far in the future where everyone has at least a smart phone. Prepare your site for the inevitable.

7. Display pretty, sortable and editable tables:

WP-Table Reloaded is a great re-carnation of the WP-Table plug-in. If you need to display tabulator data on your website look no further.

8. 301 redirection a breeze:

Redirection is a simple plug-in that enables you to setup 301 redirections without touching the htaccess file. Why would I? When we setup a CMS style WordPress site with up-to 3 levels of navigation sometimes you don’t want to have landing pages for all of your parent pages… this plug-in solves that very issue.

9. Create a buzz – get people talking:

Sociable is a very simple plug-in that allows you to select various social bookmarks like facebook, twitter and digg for example. You can configure a nice subtle strip of these icons on your pages and posts allowing people to easily share your content with their networks.

10. Expand the attachments functionality:

This may be less obvious to the everyday WordPress user but we love the Attachments plug-in. Please note that we often use this one in conjunction with some custom scripting. The power of this plug-in is more relevant for the template developer opposed to the WordPress admin. It allows you to interact with the media library allowing the editor easy methods for displaying galleries, video and audio.

We hope you find these plug-ins as useful as we do.

Tags: , , ,
0 Comments
Categories: Technology, WordPress

Christmas in May: You can now place your iPad pre-orders

Simon
0
12th May


With much anticipation from the Australian new toy and gadget junkie community, Apple has finally opened the door for pre-orders for the iPad. iPads are set to hit the Australian market on May the 28th. We were pleasantly surprised with the price. It seems to be a good $150 cheaper than expected based on prices out of America.

We have conducted a bit of preliminary research on iPad data plans from 3G mobile carriers.

The big players, Telstra and Optus, have announced iPad 3G plans but are only teasing us with vague details. Overall we are delighted to here that all major Australian telcos have confirmed that they will be releasing dedicated mobile broadband plans and deals for the iPad 3G on release in Australia.

Checkout some of the plan details we found listed on www.whistleout.com.au

Tags: , ,
0 Comments
Categories: Mobiles, Technology

iPhone OS 4.0 offers over 100 new killer features!!

Simon
0
6th May

We are very excited about the latest up and coming update from Apple. This is no minor update, the iPhone OS 4.0 update is going to be huge. It has over 100 new features, and most importantly it supports multitasking.

“create apps that are even more powerful, innovative, and amazing”

Although we are excited about the improved UI and UX we are more excited about what the new update means to application developers. It seems Apple have kept a very keen ear to the ground and listened to all of our requests. Available to developers is a new software development kit (SDK) which offers over 1500 new APIs -- and in Apples words, ” create apps that are even more powerful, innovative, and amazing”.

While Apple has not announced any release date for iPhone OS 4.0, it is reasonable to guess that they will release it some time in June 2010. Last year Apple released the iPhone 3.0 update in June 17, during WWDC 2009 so we can expect them to release it close to the same time this year as well seeming this years WWDC just got announced for the 7-11 of June.

APIs Conduct is especially excited about…

Calendar Access Apps can now create and edit events directly in the Calendar app with Event Kit. Create recurring events, set up start and end times and assign them to any calendar on the device.

Video playback & Capture You now have full programmatic control over video playback and capture, using new APIs in the AV Foundation framework.

In-App SMS Compose SMS messages from within apps, similar to the Mail compose sheet added in iPhone SDK 3.0

Map Kit Improvements Mapping applications can now include overlays that can identify regions on a map. Draw routes with annotations for customized directions and other functionalities.

Photo Library Access Applications now have direct access to user photos and videos with the Media Library APIs.

Quick Look Applications can now present previews of documents, like attachments in Mail, using the new Quick Look APIs.

Now is the time to realise that great idea you have! let’s talk

Tags: , , , ,
0 Comments
Categories: Innovation, Mobiles, Technology

Conduct gets their hands on Apples newest toy: iPad

Charlie
0
15th April

iPad Coco HeadsI was fortunate to have my first demo of the iPad at this month’s Coco Heads gathering. Everything about the funky little device exceeded all of my expectations!

It had a great weight to it, the screen was amazingly clear, the GUI was beautiful and completely intuitive making me feel right at home and comfortable.

Apple have definitely leveraged off the great attributes of the iPhone. The iPad offers an amazingly simple UI maintaining a great balance between functionality and design.

I played around using keynote and explored how easy it was to use. I especially liked the pop up keyboard, it was extremely responsive and very easy to touch type like on a normal keyboard.

Overall Apple has demostrated superior foresight, leadership and creativity. This is yet another positive move foward for mobile computing – the commercial possibilities for this device are endless!

Tags: , ,
0 Comments
Categories: Business, Innovation, Technology

HTC Evo 4G

Simon
2
25th March

Amazingly huge screen? Check. Point-and-shoot beating camera? Check. The first Android smartphone to run on a 4G network: priceless? We are confident that all this candy will come at a price.

Operating on Sprint’s WiMax 4G network, the Evo will offer sizzling download speeds, helped along by the 1GHz Snapdragon processor, as well as a 4.3-inch touch screen, an eight megapixel camera with autofocus (and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera for those video chat calls), Android 2.1, and the ability to share its 4G connection with up to eight devices over Wi-Fi. Hands up who wants one…

Check it out

Tags: , ,
2 Comments
Categories: Mobiles, Technology

Australia web filter plans slammed

Simon
0
25th March

Internet giant Google led high-profile criticism of Australia’s controversial plan to filter the Internet Tuesday, saying it went too far and could set a dangerous precedent.

Currently locked in a major dispute over censorship in China, the US web giant said its primary concern with Australia’s proposal was “that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide”.

Google said Australia went “well beyond” filters being considered in countries such as Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, which focus only on blocking material related to child sex abuse.

Such a sweeping mandatory regime risked damage to Australia’s reputation, it said, adding in a veiled reference to autocratic countries such as China that it could “confer legitimacy upon filtering by other governments”.

“Australia is rightly regarded as a liberal democracy that balances individual liberty with social responsibility,” Google said, in a submission to Australia’s government.

“The scope of content to be filtered is too wide.” Google

“The governments of many other countries may justify, by reference to Australia, their use of filtering, their lack of disclosure about what is being filtered, and their political direction of agencies administering filtering.”

Canberra in December announced an ambitious plan to block access to sites featuring material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse with an Internet-wide content filter administered by service providers.

Google said such a “massive undertaking” would limit network speeds, and that filtering material from popular sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter appeared to “not be technologically possible”.

Filtering could also give a false sense of security to parents and was easily circumvented, the company said.

We would love to here your thoughts on Australia’s filter plan.

EFAPetitionElectronic Frontiers Australia is coordinating a petition against the Government’s mandatory Internet filtering policy that will be presented to the Senate of the Parliament of Australia. What are you waiting for? Help save the internet for all Australian.

Tags: ,
0 Comments
Categories: Business, Technology, Uncategorized
Page 5 of 6« First...23456