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It’s easy for agencies—especially smaller ones—to overpay when mailing and shipping. There are steps agency owners can take to prevent overspending and improve productivity. Pitney Bowes has a new online postage stamp service called pbSmartPostage that allows small business owners to buy and print postage stamps online, print exact postage when combined with a postal scale (so you don’t overpay), get discounted USPS rates on certain … [Read more...]
Google has launched GoMo, a free website resource that seeks to encourage businesses to create mobile options. “Every day more and more of your customers are looking for you on mobile devices,” Google writes in an official blog post. “If you don’t have a site that works for mobile, you’re missing out.” Located at HowToGoMo.com, GoMo presents data Google uses to make the argument that businesses need to go mobile. It offers a … [Read more...]
Microsoft’s Kinect, a motion sensing input device originally designed for the Xbox 360, turned one year old last November. The device has made a huge impact, from casual gamers to device hackers around the world. Perhaps most importantly, it’s helped create an entire new category of human-computer interface. The original interface was the Command Line (remember C>). Then came the Graphic User Interface (GUI), popularized by Apple and then … [Read more...]
Forrester’s research shows that the mobile Internet is starting to become the primary way people access and use the Internet around the world. This is starting to look like what Steve Jobs called the “post-PC” world. Forrester sees potential for growth of mobile commerce. Twenty-five percent of people in the United States have researched retail products with mobile devices but only 9% to 15% have actually completed a purchase. The United … [Read more...]
A new study from online presentation software company, SlideRocket, found that Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most difficult and least engaging pieces of office software. Over 30% of respondents reported falling asleep during a PowerPoint presentation. Of those, almost 20% have said they’ve fallen asleep so many times that they’ve lost count. The survey of over 1,000 working adults found that the most frustrating features of PowerPoint … [Read more...]
Big companies almost always have someone test websites under development for usability prior to going live. Most agencies never think about this option. It is similar to companies hiring hackers to test the Internet security of their business website or IT devices. UserTesting is a company that pays consumers or customers to pick through your website with the goal of addressing and correcting problems and challenges that consumers are … [Read more...]
My wife, Karen, and I have a mixed marriage. She's a Mac. I'm a PC. Some might argue that I even fit the PC character in the now famous Apple commercials comparing Apple products to Microsoft products. I've always respected Apple products, but have not been an Apple fan myself. My first purchase of an Apple product was the iPhone 3G, and I have enjoyed using it very much. With the passing of Steve Jobs on October 5, there has been a lot … [Read more...]
It should come as no surprise, especially if you have kids, that the amount of texting for smartphone users continues to increase. Some 83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project asked those cell phone owners in a survey how they prefer to be contacted on their cell phone and 31% said they preferred texts to talking on … [Read more...]
