AlignTech Solutions for Digital Marketing and Communications » What’s New in Web Design? I’ve worked in the digital world long enough to appreciate the old adage about change being the only constant. The relationships I’ve built with our clients don’t tend to waver over time, but the tactics and techniques we use to keep them satisfied certainly do. In my experience, the field of web design is especially vulnerable to disruption and reordering. When it comes to web design, change doesn’t have to be scary. It’s a crucial characteristic of the business, and it keeps things fresh and exciting. Mature web users (lumping members of the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation into one here) tend to focus on easily parsed content and show less susceptibility to multimedia bells and whistles. Generational differences was a key topic in my article on Trends in Technology: Rosetta Stone Required.
As a business owner or manager, it’s crucial that you understand your target online audience thoroughly. These days, simplicity is key. Use clearly marked tabs. How a small Pittsburgh IT firm competes in a big tech market. Google's new Translate app shines in a crowded field. Posted: 01/14/2015 12:04:09 AM PST# Comments A beautiful French-speaking woman.
A handsome English-speaking man. A quiet room in romantic San Francisco. Let the magic begin, right? Actually, there's also an iPhone 6 between them on the table, which is where the magic really resides on this recent morning. The two Googlers -- Parisian-born product manager Julie Cattiau and software engineer Otavio Good -- are here to unveil the company's latest Translate app, supercharged with what Google calls the biggest update in years. "I'd like a cup of coffee without milk or sugar," Good says in English into the phone, which almost immediately repeats his words in French. " Google product manager Julie Cattiau, left, and software engineer and founder of Word Lens Otavio Good, right, use the Google translate application on a mobile phone during a press conference on Monday, Jan. 12, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif.
Get ready: Your own personal interpreter is coming soon. A beautiful French-speaking woman. Inside The 3-D-Printed Limb Factory. Inside the University of Toronto's brutalist concrete library, there is a room filled with human limbs. Not real limbs, but 3-D-printed lower-leg prosthetics. They litter the Faculty of Information's Critical Making Lab, a tiny neon-red leg perched on a book shelf, and larger, white, adult-sized calf lying beside a beat-up MacBook Pro. Ginger Coons, a PhD student who prefers her name rendered as "ginger coons," picks up another limb (this one, green) and explains how each one is different.
Although the latest legs have exceeded all expectations in stress-testing—the 3-D-printed plastic is about as strong as a traditional prosthetic-–coons and associate professor Matt Ratto have yet to find the perfect thickness, the perfect fill, that they're certain will reliably support a person's weight. The project, led by Ratto, has been in development since July 2013. "The social relationships [between] these things matter a lot. Dr. Hackers are targeting execs on the road through hotel networks. For the past four years a group of sophisticated hackers has compromised the networks of luxury hotels to launch malware attacks against corporate executives and entrepreneurs traveling on business in the Asia-Pacific region. The cyberespionage group, which researchers from Kaspersky Lab dubbed Darkhotel, operates by injecting malicious code into the Web portals used by hotel guests to log in to the local network and access the Internet, typically by inputting their last name and room number.
The infections are typically brief and are meant to target only specific guests by prompting them to download trojanized updates for popular software applications. The rogue software updates deploy malware implants that then download and install digitally-signed information-stealing programs. "This group of attackers seems to know in advance when these individuals will arrive and depart from their high-end hotels," the Kaspersky Lab researchers said in a report released Monday.
A Brief History of Nearly Everything (Digitally) Important. Evolution of the World Wide Web The World Wide Web (or just Web) was conceived by Tim Berners-Lee, a (then) CERN consultant/engineer who was looking for a way to facilitate the exchange of electronic knowledge – papers, research notes, etc. – within and between CERN scientists without the need for traditional forms of communication such as snail mail, email and facsimile. Hokusai’s “Great Wave Off Kanagawa” reminds me of the ripple effect the Web has had on life as we know it.
With thanks to the Tokyo National Museum. He achieved this largely by applying hypertext as a communication layer onto the Internet. The term hypertext refers to a type of encoding. The Web morphed into a collection of standards and technologies that supported transnational exchange of information by bringing this newly developed hypertext to the academic + military network known as the Internet. Evolution of New Symbiotic Technologies Search EnginesSmartphonesRSSeCommerceSocial Networks … just to name a few. eCommerce. Why Human Creativity Will Thrive In A Robotic World. The following is a guest post. Graham Rittener is a Founding Partner of Zinc, a Design & Innovation Lab in Barcelona that partner with companies to bring their ideas to life through user-centered design. Working across both the physical and digital realms, Zinc is currently designing a robot for a company in the Gulf region.
Like many people, I have a love / hate relationship with technology. I’m fascinated by innovation in the technology space, and I’m addicted to the internet. Conversely, I get really frustrated when technology lets me down, and it drives me crazy when I see people sit down to dinner together and everybody pulls out their phones and nobody talks! This subject has become very prescient to me in recent months because we’re currently designing a robot….and I have to say it’s a lot of fun! What I do know is that robots can definitely have a positive role in our society, and of course, they already are doing. So, how can humans invoke these amazing experiences? Comments. Technology Alignment in a Global Context. During a recent trip to Japan I found several examples of how culture plays a role in the success of certain types of business. So dramatic are some of the differences between our two countries—Japan and the United States—that I began thinking about how the practice of technology alignment is as much about the culture of a company as it is simply good business sense.
If you happen to be a C-level executive for a company that uses technology… so in other words, every C-level executive with few exceptions, you’re interested in how technology alignment can help you position your company for better times ahead. Technology Alignment Culture controls the success of alignment outcomes. Photo copyright © 2012 AlignTech Solutions LLC. All rights reserved. As a simple example, consider that one very apparent cultural norm throughout Japan is maintaining cleanliness. Benefits Benefits of conducting technology alignment studies include: Many Faces of Alignment It Just Makes Sense About Jeff Hayes. ROI of Culture on IT Alignment. What does culture — that quality in groups of people that govern what we believe and how we behave — have to do with “getting things done”? And by extension, what does a company’s culture have to do with the probability of its reaching some sort of acceptable level of IT alignment?
We started to explore this question in the last post on this subject, Technology Alignment in a Global Context. For the purposes of this article, “ROI” is better understood as an acronym for “return on influence” rather than “return on investment” but both meanings are appropriate. To illustrate the influence of culture on the success of distinct companies, let’s look back at Japan. Starbucks Starbucks store at the train station in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. Starbucks entered Japan in 1996, firmly committed to selling its own kind of success as developed in the U.S. In 2002, Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz stated that Starbucks “…has a long term view of its place in Japan.” 7-Eleven Stores “PC or Mac?”
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