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Gary Edwards

Microsoft: A 'Significant Disruptor of Collaboration' - Post - No Jitter - 0 views

www.nojitter.com/...ant-disruptor-of-collaboration

Cloud-Productivity-Platform

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • In a release on the findings, Synergy attributes Microsoft's overall gain in the collaboration market to the widening of its lead in the hosted/cloud segment, as well as to its continued strong premises positioning. Calling Microsoft a "significant disruptor in collaboration," Jeremy Duke, Synergy founder and chief analyst, said the company's "aggressive embrace of all things cloud is opening up ground for further disruption and market share advances." Is Microsoft's cloud gambit lifting all boats? Synergy's 1Q data shows that, for the first time ever, total quarterly revenues from hosted/cloud solutions are higher than those for premises deployments. Hosted/cloud revenues are up 10% year on year, compared to a 2% loss in premises revenue. Among hosted/cloud options, Synergy's research showed that contact center, voice and UC as a service, video, and enterprise presence/IM enjoyed "particularly strong growth" in the opening quarter of 2015. At 51%, hosted/cloud solutions now account for slightly more than half of the total collaboration market, the firm reported. Microsoft stands to gain as enterprises become more amenable to getting communications and collaboration from the cloud. "We believe that if Microsoft is successful in rolling out Skype for Business in Office 365, it could take its collaboration opportunity to a whole new level," continued Duke, in his press release statement.
  • His thinking is similar to that of frequent No Jitter contributor and Enterprise Connect speaker, Brian Riggs, an analyst with Ovum. In an April post, Riggs said he considers Microsoft's Skype for Business Online to be a game changer for everybody -- customers included -- in the Microsoft ecosystem. With a commitment to adding PSTN connectivity and Enterprise Voice in Skype for Business Online, Microsoft has finally taken the first step toward delivery of a full-featured hosted UC service, as he explained. (Certainly Microsoft's hosted/cloud story will be a topic of interest at the Enterprise Connect Tour on implementing Lync/Skype for Business we have planned for the fall. Get more information Enterprise Connect Tour here. Join us in a city near you.) But, of course, nobody expects Cisco to sit still as Microsoft nibbles away at its toes -- and it isn't. "... such threats are not going unnoticed and we see Cisco continue to refresh and reinvent its collaboration strategy," noted Duke, pointing to the recent Tropo acquisition and Spark rollout as examples. Dismissing Cisco certainly would be foolish -- it showed strong quarterly growth, at 6% year on year to a 14% overall stake of worldwide revenues, for its premises business, and as Duke suggested, its collaboration initiatives are really starting to heat up now. I know many industry watchers, myself included, are eager to see where Cisco heads now that it has a passel of communications-savvy developers under its purview, for example.
  • Of course, Cisco and Microsoft aren't the only companies in the market. Avaya and Google hold the third seats in the premises and hosted/cloud segments, respectively, while IBM, Polycom, Verizon, Citrix, AT&T and Mitel also hold leadership positions, Synergy said. Overall revenues for collaboration products, "were once again well over $8 billion in the quarter."
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Jun 15
     
    "Latest Synergy Research data shows Microsoft lapping at Cisco's heels in the overall collaboration market, and well ahead in the hosted/cloud segment. A couple of primary tussles characterize the collaboration decision today: Cisco vs. Microsoft, and cloud vs. premises. So it behooves us to ask, then: What impact might we expect Microsoft's big push into the cloud, a la Skype for Business and Office 365, to have on each of these critical enterprise decision points? Will Microsoft push ahead of Cisco as it makes cloud the center of its collaboration universe? And will its Skype for Business/Office 365/voice story make the cloud an easier choice for enterprise communications professionals trying to determine whether to ditch a premises installation? This is certainly one way to think about the latest collaboration market data from Synergy Research Group, released this week for first-quarter 2015. The Synergy research shows Microsoft trailing Cisco ever so slightly in the total collaboration market, but well ahead of its chief competitor in hosted/cloud collaboration, as displayed in the graphic below. "
Gary Edwards

Valuable UI/UX Designer Tools and Websites That Should Not Be Ignored | TrendinTech - 0 views

trendintech.com/...tes-that-should-not-be-ignored

UI Web-Designer Tools UX-Designer

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Nov 16
     
    "If you are a UI or UX designer, then you are probably aware of some of the cool design suites and packages there are available for you to work from.  However, there are also probably a few that you don't know about and that could save you valuable time and money. Check out the below for a quick run through of some of the best available tools on the market that will improve usability and user experience."
Gary Edwards

What CSS framework should you use? | Creative Bloq - 1 views

www.creativebloq.com/...t-css-framework-should-you-use

CSS CSS-Frameworks

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 17
     
    "Mostly As: Use an existing framework If timelines are tight and a distinct style is not your priority, then an existing framework is the way to go! If you want to get up and running as quickly as possible, try Bootstrap. For a responsive site with a clean, minimal style, try Foundation. If you're building a more granular UI with some constraints, go for BassCSS. All three are robust and well-documented - you'll have a UI together in no time. Mostly B: Build your own Sounds like your project needs its own standardised, documented styles. Congratulations! You've now got a real project on your hands. Try looking at existing frameworks and building off their best practices. Think of your framework from an outside perspective. Would your team use it if they didn't have to? Solid works for BuzzFeed because it's simply easier to develop with than without it (to read more about Solid and how we got started, check out our post on Medium). Building your own tool is not easy. But persevere and some day you'll be writing cheeky quizzes in a magazine."
Gary Edwards

Evernote founder Phil Libin creating incubator for bots - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/ting-incubator-for-bots-2016-3

Phil-Libin Evernote Bots Conversational-UI

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Mar 16
     
    "he's found the most exciting thing he's seen since the iPhone emerged: bots. Specifically, chat bots that interact intelligently with people as they use apps, providing useful information before they even know they want it. "In 2007, I had this vision when I first touched my very first iPhone where I kind of understood what the next five years would bring, and I haven't had that kind of clarity since," he told us in a conversation at Y Combinator's demo day on Tuesday. "And now, I have the same kind of feeling about bots, about conversational UIs." Bots are at the heart of how Facebook, Apple, Google, and smaller companies like Atlassian and Slack are transforming how messaging works. These leaders are beyond sending simple text messages, and evolving chat into a whole tech platform almost like an operating system, where others can plug their own apps in and create entirely new functions."
Gary Edwards

Dan Grover | Bots won't replace apps. Better apps will replace apps. - 0 views

dangrover.com/...bots-wont-replace-apps.html

Messaging Notification WeChat

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The key wins for WeChat in the above interaction (compared to a native app) largely came from steamlining away app installation, login, payment, and notifications, optimizations having nothing to do with the conversational metaphor in its UI.
  • Indeed, the cornerstone of whole experience is effectively a common, semi-hierarchical stream of messages, notifications, and news with a consistent set of controls for handling them. It’s no stretch to see WeChat and its ilk not as SMS replacements but as nascent visions of a mobile OS whose UI paradigm is, rather than rigidly app-centric, thread-centric (and not, strictly speaking, conversation-centric).
  • This term – “app” – is rather old, yet only entered common parlance with the proliferation of smartphones. This is no coincidence. The app paradigm introduced on smartphone OSes circa 2007 was a radical improvement over what we’d had on the desktop. For the first time, software was easy to install, even easier to delete, and was guaranteed to not totally screw with your system (due to sandboxing/permissions models).
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Though some apps indeed are mini-desktop apps that make full use of the supercomputer I carry in my pocket, well over half fall into another category. These apps are just a vessel for a steady stream of news, notifications, messages, and other timely info ultimately residing in a backend service somewhere. They don’t really do much on their own. It’s much like how a tortilla chip’s main value is not so much in its appeal as a chip but as a cheese and chili delivery mechanism.
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Apr 16
     
    "A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION, A LITTLE MORE ACTION I don't know about you, but here's what I want to see happen. I want the first tab of my OS's home screen to be a central inbox half as good as my chat app's inbox. It want it to incorporate all my messengers, emails, news subscriptions, and notifications and give me as great a degree of control in managing it. No more red dots spattered everywhere, no swiping up to see missed notifications. Make them a bit richer and better-integrated with their originating apps. Make them expire and sync between my devices as appropriate. Just fan it all out in front of me and give me a few simple ways to tame them. I'll spend most of my day on that page, and when I need to go launch Calculator or Infinity Blade, I'll swipe over. Serve me a tasty info burrito as my main course instead of a series of nachos. The next time I'm back stateside, I want my phone to support something like Chrome Apps, but retaining a few useful properties of apps instead of being big, weird icons that just link to websites. I want to sit down at T.G.I Friday's4 and scan a QR code at my restaurant table and be able to connect to their WiFi, order, and pay. Without having to download a big app over my data plan, set up an account, and link a card when it is installed. Imagine if I could also register at the hospital or DMV in this fashion. Or buy a movie ticket. Or check in for a flight. As a user, I want my apps - whether they're native or web-based pseudo-apps - to have some consistent concept of identity, payments, offline storage, and data sharing. I want to be able to quickly add someone in person or from their website to my contacts. The next time I do a startup, I want to spend my time specializing in solving a specific problem for my users, not getting them over the above general hurdles. I don't actually care how it happens. Maybe the OS makers will up their game. Maybe Facebook, Telegram, or Snapchat can solve these pr
Gary Edwards

Paper is Dropbox's new vision for how teams can work together - 0 views

www.engadget.com/...paper-team-collaboration-tools

DropBox Office-365 gDocs Collaboration Productivity

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Project managers can add to-do lists, complete with checkboxes and "@" mentions to the member of your team who needs to take care of the associated task. If coding is more your game, you can start typing lines of code right into Paper and it'll automatically format it appropriately. Beyond text, any file you store in your Dropbox can quickly be added to Paper -- if you grab the sharing URL of the file and paste it into Paper, the program automatically formats a preview for you. That way, you can peek at an Excel or PowerPoint file right in line with the rest of your Paper document, or click to see it in full or save to your Dropbox. Google Docs files are even supported here -- it's the first time Dropbox has really integrated with Docs and Drive, itself a competitor to Dropbox's main business.
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Oct 15
     
    " Six months ago, Dropbox quietly announced a collaborative note-taking tool called Notes and launched it in an invite-only beta test. But starting today, the product is being officially branded as Dropbox Paper and the beta test is expanding significantly. You'll still need an invite, but the company gave us a preview of what's probably the biggest addition to Dropbox in years. It's far too early to tell if Paper will be able to keep up with entrenched tools from Google, Microsoft and many others -- but there are definitely some interesting features here that make it worth keeping an eye on. For now, Paper is a web-only app that you can access through your Dropbox account, although the company says it'll have a mobile app ready to go when the product comes out of beta. At first glance, Paper's UI is reminiscent of the scores of minimalist, lightweight text-editing apps that have come out in the past few years, such as IA Writer. But while IA Writer and its ilk are designed for solo composition, Paper is all about working together. As in Google Docs, multiple users can edit a document at the same time. Each is designated by a colored cursor, and the user's full name is displayed in the margins, crediting their contributions to the file. From a text perspective, Paper is quite basic; there's only one font and three sizes available. You can do your basic bold, italics, underline and strikethrough formatting and format text into a block quote, but that's about it. Dropbox specifically said that the purpose of Paper was to keep the focus on sharing ideas rather than formatting. In particular, the company made it so that you can use its app to share pretty much anything, regardless of what tools you might be using."
Gary Edwards

Microsoft (MSFT) Announces New Office 365 Investments; Includes Skype for Business Mac ... - 0 views

www.streetinsider.com/...11543171.html

Office-365 Skype-for-Business

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The Skype for Business Mac Preview will release in three cumulative stages leading to public availability planned for Q3 of 2016. Today’s initial release lets you see and join your meetings. We’ll soon follow up with additional value, including the contact list and conversations via chat, audio and video. Commercial customers can request an invite to test the new Skype for Business Mac Preview at SkypePreview.com. We’ll start by issuing invites to IT professionals and continue rolling out invites on a daily basis with the goal of rapidly increasing usage before opening up the preview to everyone. To learn more about the Mac Preview, read the Skype for Business Mac Preview blog.Bringing collaboration to the forefront in OfficeThis month’s updates to Office 2016 desktop client bring the collaboration experience front and center. Core sharing capabilities, a new document activity feed, presence information and Skype for Business instant messaging are now all available at a glance in the top right corner of documents that you are sharing with others.
  • Now you can easily see who’s working and where in your documents, as well as quickly start real-time conversations with Skype for Business.The enhanced collaboration experience in Office 2016 includes:People hub—Now you have more visibility into who is actively working in a Word or PowerPoint doc with you. At a glance you can quickly see everyone participating in the document on the ribbon and then, with one click, jump to exactly where they are working.Skype for Business integration—You can click a person’s thumbnail to initiate a Skype for Business IM conversation or see their full contact card. Click the Skype for Business logo to initiate a group chat with everybody currently working in the document.
  • The Activity feed provides access to a full history of document changes, including prior versions.Activity feed—Quick access to the activity feed makes it easy to see what’s been happening in your document, presentation or spreadsheet saved in SharePoint or OneDrive for Business. The Activity feed shows you a full history of changes, and you can easily open or even revert to a prior version if you need to.Comments—With one click you can make or view comments in your document or slide. Collaboration flows easily with threaded conversations and quick access buttons that let you reply to or resolve comments, and then mark items as complete.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Yammer external groups are now availableOffice 365 customers can now create external Yammer groups for seamless and secure collaboration across company and organizational boundaries. External groups work just like internal groups by enabling conversations around topics, documents, notes and links that can now extend to customers, partners or people in other organizations. We have put controls in place to ensure the security of information, such as requiring group admin approval before external members are added and allowing Office 365 admins to disable external groups for the organization. Visit “Create and manage external groups in Yammer” to get started.
  • Work smarter and more intuitively on the goWe’re continuing to improve the Office mobile apps so that it’s even easier to be productive anywhere and on any device. Some highlights this month:Edit with speed—New mobile updates provide access to the most popular commands right at your fingertips in Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Windows Phone, iPhone and Android. These commands appear at the bottom of the screen, tailored for the content you select.
  • Quickly access relevant features based on content you select in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on phones.Record audio into OneNote on Windows Phone—It’s easy to capture a quick audio note on the go with your Windows Phone. Simply tap the paper clip and then the microphone on your keyboard command bar to get started.Use your pen as a pointer—We introduced instant inking earlier this year so you can use an active pen to ink instantly without first selecting a feature or control. This month, we are addressing feedback we heard from customers who wish to keep using their pen as a pointer to select and interact with content. To learn more, see “Draw and annotate with ink in Office 2016.”Get insights at a glance—We expanded Smart Lookup to Word, Excel and PowerPoint on iOS and Android. Smart Lookup is powered by Bing and uses the selected text and surrounding content to give you contextually relevant results. Right click on text and select Smart Lookup to get started.
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Apr 16
     
    "Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) posted the following to its Office blog on Tuesday: This month, we're announcing several new Office 365 investments to help people better collaborate. This includes the much anticipated Skype for Business Mac Preview, new Yammer external groups and improvements in our Office Mobile apps on Windows Phone, iOS and Android. Please read on for details. Introducing Skype for Business Mac Preview Today, we are excited to announce the start of the Skype for Business Mac Preview. This new app offers a simple yet powerful experience that brings our Mac customers into the modern era of Skype for Business. "
Gary Edwards

​802.11ac - CES 2015: D-Link attempts to break 1Gbps Wi-Fi speed barrier | ZDNet - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/...eaks-1gbps-wi-fi-speed-barrier

wifi MiMO 802.11ac-WAVE2

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • D-Link isn't using the current 802.11ac 2013 standard for its new line of high-speed routers; instead, it's using the latest Broadcom chipset based on the still unratified 802.11ac 2015 standard, aka Wave 2. This new wave of technology pushes the theoretical limit of Wi-Fi to 7Gbps.
  • In addition, Wave 2 supports multi-user MIMO, which enables simultaneous multiple spatial streams to multiple clients. Multi-user MIMO is seen as being as big an improvement for Wi-Fi as the jump from shared to switched Ethernet was for wired networking.
  • Multi-user MIMO, however, won't be supported in the AC3200. You'll need to wait for the next two models in this new Wi-Fi router family to appear later this year for that.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • A D-Link product manager assured me at CES that this router, and its two forthcoming even faster brothers -- the AC5300 ULTRA Wi-Fi Router (DIR-895L/R) and AC3100 ULTRA Wi-Fi Router (DIR-885L/R) -- would be brought up to code with firmware upgrades.
  • D-Link promises that the three routers in the ULTRA Performance Series will deliver "chart-topping wireless speeds up to 5.3 Gbps ." I'm not so sure about that last boast, but what I do know is that in order to break the 1Gbps barrier you'll need to use D-Link's ULTRA AC1900 Wi-Fi USB Adapter (DWA-192) on your existing laptops and desktop PCs. Even a brand new computer with an 802.11ac Wave 1 chipset won't be able to crack the high-speed wall.
  • Besides sheer speed, these new routers also feature Wireless 11AC Beamforming to enhance signal strength and throughput; Smart Connect to automatically assign clients to the wireless band providing the best bandwidth; and an advanced QoS engine with a drag-and-drop UI to provide an easy way to prioritize applications and devices.
  • The D-Link AC3200 ULTRA Wi-Fi Router is available now for $309.99. The other two routers and the AC1900 USB adapter won't show up until the second quarter, and pricing has yet to be announced.
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Jan 15
     
    "Ever since 802.11ac started appearing in routers we've been dreaming of getting honest-to-goodness 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) Wi-Fi speeds. Ha! The fastest 802.11ac router CNET or ZDNet has seen to date, the Asus AC2400 RT-AC87U Dual-band Wireless Gigabit Router delivers 504 Megabits per second (Mbps) to clients. D-Link's new AC3200 ULTRA Wi-Fi Router (DIR-890L/R), introduced at CES, promises to deliver speeds of up to 1.3Gbps."
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