How the brain makes decisions

Some types of decision-making have proven to be very difficult to simulate, limiting progress in the development of computer models of the brain. EPFL scientists have developed a new model of complex decision-making, and have validated it against humans and cutting-edge computer models, uncovering fascinating information about what influences our decision-making and ability to learn from it.

Decision-making has gathered immense interest in fields like psychology, neuroscience, robotics and even economics, with numerous models and software simulating the human mind. However, such models are limited to a type of decision-making that focuses only on each decision step in isolation, without taking into account the preceding decisions leading up to it, although the latter is often our everyday experience. Publishing in PLoS One, scientists from EPFL and the University of Berne have perfected a model that can simulate this type of decision-making and learning conditions with surprising accuracy.

Decisions, feedback, learning
Decision-making comes in two major into two types: Markovian and non-Markovian, named after the mathematician Andrey Markov (1856-1922). Simply put, in Markovian decision-making, the next decision step depends entirely on the current state of affairs. For example, when playing backgammon, the next move depends only on the current layout of the board, and not on how it got to be like that. This relatively straightforward process has been extensively modeled in computers and machines.

Non-Markovian decision-making is more complex. Here, the next step is affected by other factors, such as external constraints and previous decisions. For example, a person's goal might be to travel on the train. But what will happens when he arrives at the door to the train depends on whether or not he has previously visited the ticket booth to buy a ticket. In other words, the next step depends on how he got there; without a ticket, he cannot proceed to the desired goal. In neuroscience, the "buy-ticket" step is referred to as a "switch-state".

A new model of decision-making
A team led by Michael Herzog at EPFL and Walter Senn at the University of Berne developed the first biologically plausible model that can handle non-Markovian decision-making. Herzog's group has now tested it with humans as well as various computer models. The model, developed in a previous study, was now validated with two distinct tests, designed by Aaron Michael Clarke and Elisa Tartaglia in Herzog's lab. The tests were performed by human subjects, and three computer models with different degrees of learning ability. In addition, the test were also taken by an advanced brain model called a "spiking neuron network", which makes decisions based on whether the majority of neurons in a population fired a signal, or "spike", and simulates human performance in a very realistic manner.

The first experiment tested the impact of the switch-state on people's decision-making and learning. Users played a computer game where they had to navigate through eight icons (a gun, a car etc.) to finally reach the end goal (called "Yeah!"). Each icon came with three buttons, each leading down a different route, and the user had to decide which one to take. Although there was a relatively short route from the first icon to the goal, it was impossible to go through it unless the user first went through a switch-state icon – an image of a computer. Users repeated the experiment multiple times, becoming increasingly better at deciding which routes to pick. For example, most people took over 80 clicks to get to the goal when they began, but after 40 games, they needed fewer than ten.

The second experiment tested how delayed feedback affects decision-making and learning. Here, users were shown a set of experimental images and told that each image belonged to either category one or category two. Each category corresponded to either the left or the right arrow on the keyboard, but the participants were not told which arrow went with which image beforehand. Next, the users were shown each image one at a time, and had to press either the left or right arrow depending on the category of each icon. In response, the screen produce a RIGHT or WRONG feedback message. As the test went on, the feedback became delayed, to the point where feedback from one icon would come after the feedback for the next icon had appeared.

Decision dynamics
The results of the study drew three major conclusions. First, that human decision-making can perform just as well as current sophisticated computer models under non-Markovian conditions, such as the presence of a switch-state. This is a significant finding in our current efforts to model the human brain and develop artificial intelligence systems.

Secondly, that delayed feedback significantly impairs human decision-making and learning, even though it does not impact the performance of computer models, which have perfect memory. In the second experiment, it took human participants ten times more attempts to correctly recall and assign arrows to icons. Feedback is a crucial element of decision-making and learning. We set a goal, make a decision about how to achieve it, act accordingly, and then find out whether or not our goal was met. In some cases, e.g. learning to ride a bike, feedback on every decision we make for balancing, pedaling, braking etc. is instant: either we stay up and going, or we fall down. But in many other cases, such as playing backgammon, feedback is significantly delayed; it can take a while to find out if each move has led us to victory or not.

Finally, the researchers found that the spiking neurons model matches and describes human performance very well. The significance of this cannot be overstated, as non-Markovian decision-making has proven to be very challenging for computer models. "This is a proof-of-concept study," says Michael Herzog. "But the study makes an important contribution toward understanding, and accurately modeling, the human brain – and even surpassing its abilities with artificial intelligence."

Source : medicalxpress

Dr Laura Receives Google Research Award

American University’s Dr. Laura DeNardis Receives Google Research Faculty Award

Google honors Dr. DeNardis’ innovative exploration of Internet governance

 

Newswise — WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 28 2015) — American University’s Dr. Laura DeNardis, Professor and Associate Dean in the School of Communication, is the recipient of a prestigious Google Faculty Research Award for her project “The Destabilization of Internet Governance.” As an information engineer and social scientist, her research studies the social and political implications of Internet technical architecture and governance.

“Because the functions necessary to keep the Internet operational are behind the scenes, citizens and policymakers sometimes assume that “things just work,” said Dr. Laura DeNardis, American University Professor. “This project examines how changes to Internet governance, like changes to technology, are also changes in arrangements of power with implications for the stability and constitution of infrastructure as well as individual liberty.”

The Google Research Award supports its mission to make the flow of information universally accessible by encouraging and backing world-class, full-time faculty pursuing research in areas of Computer Science, Engineering, and related fields. Dr. DeNardis’ project will examine the geopolitical forces seeking to change systems of Internet governance and assess the implications of these changes for the stability of Internet technical architecture.

The grant will support doctoral student in communication, Nathalia Foditsch, who has co-lectured in Comparative U.S. Brazil Legal and Judicial Systems at the Washington College of Law, American University and is currently the Internet Governance Project Manager at the Center for Technology and Society at the Fundação Getulio Vargas School of Law in Rio de Janeiro. She is also helping Aspen Institute design a US-Brazilian Dialogue of leaders in the communications policy space. Previously, Nathalia worked for the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the Brookings Institution and the Brazilian federal antitrust authority. Nathalia is a licensed attorney and earned her Master's degrees in Law and Government and a Master's in Public Policy. She will be joining Dr. DeNardis at the School of Communication in the Fall 2015.

As one of the world’s foremost Internet Governance scholars, Dr. DeNardis will discuss human rights and Internet technology on June 10, 2015 at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. She is also scheduled to talk about Internet governance on July 8, 2015 at Microsoft Faculty Research Summit in Redding, WA.

About American University

American University is a leader in global education, enrolling a diverse student body from throughout the United States and nearly 140 countries. Located in Washington, D.C., the university provides opportunities for academic excellence, public service, and internships in the nation’s capital and around the world.
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We are fossasia stay connected with us

 Source : newswise

Android Next Version

Android's next version to offer new ways to fetch information, pay merchants, protect privacy.

David Singleton, director at Android Wear, speaks during the Google I/O 2015 keynote presentation in San Francisco, Thursday, May 28, 2015. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

 

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google's next version of its Android operating system will boast new ways to fetch information, pay merchants and protect privacy on mobile devices as the Internet company duels with Apple in the quest to make their technology indispensable.

The upgrade will give Android's personal assistant, Google Now, expanded powers of intuition that may be greeted as a great convenience to some and a tad too creepy for others.

Most of the renovations unveiled Thursday at Google's annual developers' conference won't be available until late summer or early fall, around the same time that Apple is expected to release the latest overhaul of the iOS software that powers the iPhone and iPad.

The annual changes to Android and iOS are becoming increasingly important as people become more dependent on smartphones to manage their lives. Android holds about an 80 percent share of the worldwide smartphone market, with iOS a distant second at 16 percent, according to the research firm International Data Corp.

Both Google and Apple are vying to make their products even more ubiquitous by transplanting much of their mobile technology into automobiles and Internet-connected televisions and appliances. Google hopes to play a prominent role in the management of home security and appliances with a new operating system called Brillo that will interact with Android devices.

Here's a closer look at some of the key features in the upcoming Android upgrade, currently known simply as "M'':
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NOW ON TAP

Google Now currently learns a user's interests and habits by analyzing search requests and scanning emails so it can automatically present helpful information, such as the latest news about a favorite sports team or how long it will take to get to work.

With the M upgrade, users will be able to summon Google Now to scan whatever content might be on a mobile device's screen so it can present pertinent information about the topic of a text, a song, a video clip or an article.

The new Android feature, called "Now on Tap," will be activated by holding down the device's home button or speaking, "OK Google," into the microphone. That action will prompt Now on Tap to scan the screen in attempt to figure out how to be the most helpful. Or, if speaking, users can just say what they are seeking, such as "Who sings this?"

Google is hoping to provide Android users with what they need at the precise moment they need it without forcing them to hopscotch from one app to another.
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MOBILE PAYMENT DO-OVER

Android M will include an alternative to the mobile payment system that Apple introduced last fall. Google's response, called Android Pay, will replace Google Wallet for making mobile purchases in stores and applications. Google Wallet, which came out in 2011, will still work for sending payments from one person to another.

Like Apple's system, Android Pay can be used to store major credit and debit cards in smartphones that can be used to pay merchants equipped with terminals that work with the technology. Android Pay will also work on devices running on the KitKat and Lollipop versions of Android released the past two years.
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PROTECTING PRIVACY

Android M will be compatible with fingerprint scanners so device users can verify their identities by pressing a button instead of entering a passcode. Apple's iPhones began using a fingerprint reader in 2013.
Besides supporting fingerprint scanners, Android M will make it easier to users to prevent mobile applications from grabbing their personal information. Permission will only need to be granted to each app if the access is needed for a specific action. That means Android users won't be asked to share information about their contact lists, photo rolls or locations until an app won't work without it.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source : usnews

Google plays catch-up to Apple. Again

The feature wars between Apple and Google don’t bring out the best in either company.

It’s that time of year again.
Google’s I/O conference begins today and Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference follows in a week and a half. Get ready for a barrage of competing leaks, releases and screaming headlines as each company tries to upstage the other, egged on by a click-hungry tech press.

Today it’s Apple Pay. Tomorrow it will be something else.

We’ve come a long way since Steve Jobs called Android “a stolen product” and promised to destroy it. The rhetoric has cooled, but the issue is the same. Google copied Apple to make Android. It copied the App Store to make Google Play. It’s copying Apple Pay to make Android Pay.

There’s much to admire in Google. I’m awed by their willingness to tackle truly daunting engineering problems: Machine learning, Autonomous cars. Mapping the Internet. Mapping, for that matter, the world’s roads and highways.

But Android was something different. It was a defensive play, and a sneaky one at that, given that Google had a seat on Apple’s board of directors while the iPhone was in development.
Android was never as good as iOS, but it was good enough. It opened the door to Asia’s fast followers, who flooded the market with me-too products.

Jobs may have seen what was coming when he threatened to go “thermonuclear” on Android. He turned to the courts for relief, but that too was a defensive play. Apple’s strength comes from designing must-have devices we didn’t know we needed, not from filing lawsuits, buying patents or adding features to keep up with the competition.

Last year, more than a billion Android devices were shipped, according to Gartner, five times as many as Apple. In terms of features and services, the two platforms have reached a rough parity.

If there’s any consolation for the way Android vs. iOS turned out, it’s that there seems to be room in the market for two dominant smartphone operating systems. And while the competition is still trying to figure out how to make money from Android, iOS has made Apple the most valuable company on the planet.

Source : fortune

Gogo’s GTO connectivity to fly first as FAA greenlights testing

Gogo 2Ku

Commercial aviation  took another step towards accessing faster inflight connectivity today as Gogo received certification from the FAA to begin testing an important part of its new 2Ku Internet service on board the company’s Boeing 737-500 flying testbed.

The STC certification means that Gogo is now permitted to operate the 737 with its new radome, antenna, and other systems necessary to handle the connectivity requirements. Initial testing will involve only one ThinKom-made Ku-band antenna installed under the radome, but there is room for two.

With only one Ku antenna, the system will operate as Gogo’s hybrid air-to-ground (ATG)/Ku-based “Ground-to-Orbit” (GTO) solution, which was initially announced in September 2013.
“It’s set up as GTO right now,” Gogo spokesman Steve Nolan confirmed to RGN.
The Chicago-headquartered company expects to receive permission from the FAA next month to add the second antenna under the radome and operate it in the 2Ku configuration.

While a number of airlines expressed interest in both the GTO and 2Ku systems it is expected that most will eventually choose to fly with the 2Ku solution rather than GTO. This is mostly because 2Ku does not suffer the requirement to remain over US and Canadian airspace where the ground-based portion of the service is available.

An added benefit is that the 2Ku solution should offer improved upload speeds for passengers. That does not mean the GTO product is DoA, though Gogo’s CTO Anand Chari has previously suggested that “it doesn’t matter” if the GTO product never flies commercially because its development was a necessary step towards the 2Ku solution’s success.

It remains to be seen if 2Ku can deliver on promised speeds of up to 70 Mbps across full fleets of aircraft flying with this technology. However, even though 2Ku has not yet been fully tested on the Gogo 737 testbed, Delta Air Lines gave the technology its vote of confidence when the carrier recently tapped Gogo to provide 2Ku for hundreds of aircraft.

Delta will no doubt be pleased to learn that the 2Ku assembly is expected to meet the specifications laid out in ARINC 791, the standard generally used by the industry for Ku and Ka-band airborne terminal unit fittings. During the recent APEX Technology Conference in California, Peter Lemme – who chairs the AEEC subcommittee that developed the spec – noted that the rear antenna for 2Ku “sits on top of fittings that we have expressed in 791 so that is creating a bit of a challenge on airplanes built to 791 to accommodate these antennas. It is not insurmountable; it just means that we are going to have to do a little more mechanical engineering – basically probably move the rear aperture up just a little bit, fractions of an inch effectively, to create enough vacated space to allow the fittings to coexist with the antenna itself.”
Meanwhile, satellite operators are working to get High Throughput Satellites (HTS) into the skies, and this will benefit Gogo, which believes 2Ku can offer 100 Mbps speeds over HTS. Another Ku connectivity provider, Panasonic Avionics, has already locked down a plan to access HTS capacity with partners like Intelsat.

“I think the first [HTS] goes the end of this year. The next one goes in next year and then covering the Pacific by 2017,” said Greg Montevideo, senior director of global communications at Panasonic. “We know bandwidth is always going to be in demand, [passengers] are going to always want more bandwidth.”

Source : runwaygirlnetwork

Apps and the Internet can empower people to be healthier

The science is overwhelming: regular exercise and a healthy, calorie-conscious diet are the keys to better health. But despite what we know about healthy living, Canadians face an obesity epidemic. Nearly one quarter of all adult Canadians are obese and one in 10 children could be similarly labelled. A little over four per cent of the Canadian health-care budget goes to treating the fallout of obesity, which includes conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and osteoarthritis.

In addition to lessening the risk of obesity, the benefits of a healthy lifestyle are manyfold and include improved mental well-being, longer and more productive lives, and a reduced risk of cancer.  So although the science is clear, the challenge is to translate this knowledge into reality. Many Canadians have trouble committing to serious lifestyle change.

There are many reasons why people fail to meet their lifestyle goals, including low motivation, time- management challenges, busy competing schedules, and lack of coaching or mentorship. Could the Internet and mobile/smartphone technology help address this conundrum? The health-care world has been transformed in the last several years — smartphone apps, social media, and the Internet may be able to empower both patients and care providers to make healthy changes. Albertans in Calgary and Edmonton can already consult a mobile app and website that provides real-time information on wait times in local emergency departments. Where can some of these technologies have their greatest impact on our health and that of all Canadians?

The Internet, texting and mobile apps have an ever-increasing presence in global health care. Nearly 80 per cent of the population of developed countries have access to the Internet. Nearly a third of all the people on the planet have access to mobile broadband, a five-fold increase over 2008.  In the U.S., 72 per cent of adults use the Internet to look for health information and 32 per cent turn to their smartphones.

Known collectively as eHealth, the explosion in health related resources and technologies provide a wide range of opportunities ranging from health coaching, sugar and blood pressure monitoring, and helping patients with a range of chronic diseases look after their condition.

One of the best studied uses of eHealth is in the area of weight loss.  In the May issue of Obesity Reviews, researchers from New South Wales in Australia look through the world literature to determine if eHealth can tackle the weighty problem of obesity.  They analyzed 84 studies, all randomized trials creating an experimental context where some patients get eHealth and some get regular weight-loss measures.  Some of the studies aimed primarily to achieve weight-loss targets, others sought to maintain weight loss, and the final bunch were specifically focused on preventing weight gain.

Most of the eHealth interventions involved some kind of Internet-based technology to help obese individuals set and achieve weight-loss targets; 40 per cent used more than one approach and integrated other technologies like texting or smartphone mobile apps. For the goal of achieving weight loss, the results were impressive. Those using eHealth technologies had a 2.7 kilogram greater weight loss over similar groups trying to lose weight without the benefit of these tools.  Most of the benefit came with combination approaches, including a weight-loss website coupled with an app or texting service. Unfortunately, the data and findings are much more limited when it comes to keeping the weight off or preventing weight gain; there is simply not enough research yet.

Fifty years ago physicians held their stethoscopes and marvelled at how they could ever have practised medicine without the ability to hear lung and heart sounds.  In 2015 and going forward, the same could well be true for eHealth.

Need some help getting into shape and shedding some extra baggage?  It’s a tough road but please consider leaning on one or more of your screens to get you to where you need to be.

We are FOSSASIA

Source : calgaryherald

Harness technology for socioeconomic change in MENA

Government, business and civil society leaders convened at the MENA World Economic Forum 2015 in Jordan last week, with a common goal to create peace and prosperity in the region.

This comes at a critical time when increased geopolitical tensions are creating a sense of urgency for a pillar of hope. While world leaders discussed an actionable framework to solve the region’s challenges, strategic investments in technology will be crucial to providing an opportunity for job creation and a new path for the future.

Today, there are 15 billion devices connected to the internet, and that number is expected to increase to over 50 billion by 2020. This next phase of the internet called the Internet of Everything (IoE)– which is the connection of people, process, data and things – will usher in a new era.

These connections have the power to help the MENA region tackle employment and economic difficulties but first, every country must build a national broadband infrastructure. Those that prioritise network readiness will be able to realise the economic and societal benefits of the internet.
Across the region we are starting to see the impact of connectivity.

In the UAE, the vison of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to make Dubai a smart city by utilising technology to create a new reality, is already coming to fruition.

Sensors embedded throughout the city will connect everything from utility use to traffic, improving the lives of citizens and creating a potential value of $4.87 billion (Dhs17.9 billion) by 2019.

Qatar is also facing increased urgency to implement a smart city plan with the upcoming World Cup 2022. It also recently unveiled the Qatar National Vision 2030 with the goal to turn the country into one that listens, learns, and responds to its citizens’ daily needs, making an impact in every field: education, healthcare, energy, security, and transportation.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has also invested billions of dollars to build four new economic cities in order to diversify and move gross domestic product away from the hydrocarbon sector (oil accounts for 94 per cent of the country’s export revenue).

The smart cities are expected to support the creation of a knowledge economy that will provide the country’s youth with the skills required for professional and senior-level jobs.

While these innovations are helping to create jobs, more needs to be done across the region, as it still faces one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world at over 27 per cent – more than double the global average.

The issue remains that there is a gap between ICT job openings and the qualified candidates needed to fill them. To help the unemployed youth find jobs, the public and private sectors need to come together and create opportunities for foundational ICT skills development.

Healthcare delivery is equally important to economic development in the MENA region. People in remote and rural areas often cannot get the healthcare they need – the distance may be too far, the travel cost too high, or the coordination too complicated.

Telehealth technology, powered by the internet, can help fix this problem by enabling rural patients to have face-to-face video consultations with specialists and to have their treatment plans monitored from a distance.
Cloud-based platforms also enable access to picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) and collaboration software “as a service” to help improve the quality of care for patients by enabling radiologists to read exams remotely.

As the MENA region charts the course for its economic transformation, the public and private sectors must come together to lay the digital foundation for its long-term economic development.

I believe that the future of the region lies in the ability of its leaders to set a bold technological agenda and take the initiative on transformational projects that harness the power of internet to bring about meaningful change.

The time to act is now.

 Source : albawaba

Avaya Grows Cloud, Mobile UC Capabilities With Esna Buy

The acquisition of Esna will enable Avaya to integrate communications tools like voice, video and IM inside cloud-based business applications.

Avaya is addressing the growing trend in the unified communications space toward mobile and cloud-based solutions by buying Esna Technologies, which builds real-time collaboration and communications software. The deal will enable Avaya to integrate multivendor communications capabilities—from voice and video to instant messaging presence and conferencing—into cloud-based applications. The move will make it easier for enterprises and midmarket organizations to adopt such communications-enabled applications and for users to move from one application to another or change devices without disrupting the work they're doing. The deal was announced May 28, though no financial details were released. "For all the industry's talk about increasing simplicity, gains have been moderate at best," Gary Barnett, senior vice president and general manager of Avaya's Engagement Solutions business unit, wrote in a post on the company blog. "End users still need to fumble through too many clients and applications to communicate, often taking them away from the work they're actually doing and the applications they work in most frequently. The kinds of applications that people are using continue to evolve, particularly as companies increasingly move away from desktop incumbents toward cloud-based services.

"While Avaya and others have done well closing the gap between desktop and mobile, we still need to bridge the divide between applications—not only communications applications, but business and communications applications."

Unified communications (UC) vendors are spending too much time pushing a vision of a single client that brings together the various aspects of communications and makes them available on any device, which can tie end users to a single vendor and still forces them to exit whatever business applications they're running if they want to communicate, Barnett wrote. "It takes roughly seven clicks to move from the business application to communicate as desired, and there's likely at least one mode that is mediocre or missing altogether," he wrote. "It's disruptive to collaboration, stifles engagement and impedes progress." Esna will enable the integration of communications into business applications, which will make it easier for users to collaborate from within the applications they're using and from any device they want, according to Avaya officials. The end result will be greater employee productivity, while IT departments will be able to avoid vendor lock-in through an open approach that will enable them to use their current multivendor collaboration infrastructure while integrating new offerings from Avaya and other companies into cloud-based applications, they said. Esna, a 26-year-old company based in Ontario, is no stranger to Avaya. The vendor has been a member of Avaya's DevConnect Select Product Program for several years, and its iLink technology enables users of Avaya's Scopia video and voice conferencing platform to embed a link to a Scopia virtual meeting room in a meeting notice in Outlook, Barnett wrote. Mohammad Nezerati, Esna's founder and former CEO and CTO, said in a post on the Avaya blog that Esna's technology connects Avaya's voice and mobile networks with cloud-based business software such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft's Office 365, Google Apps and Jive Software. "The company embeds these communication tools inside the business applications people use every day," wrote Nezerati, who now leads Avaya's UC applications group. "That means busy professionals no longer need to use multiple applications to communicate and connect with colleagues, customers and partners." Avaya in June will offer an Esna-enabled Avaya Communicator Web client for both its IP Office and Aura platforms, which will enable voice and video capabilities that can be embedded into public or private cloud-based business applications. Later this year, Avaya will offer Esna integration with other products, he wrote.
Source : eweek

Cisco’s Nexus Can Regain Data Center, Cloud Share, Says Jefferies

Jefferies & Co. networking analyst George Notter today reports on having met with Ishmael “Ish” Limkakeng, who runs the Insieme data center switching effort at Cisco Systems (CSCO), a visit that reassured him about Cisco’s position in data centers and the cloud.
Notter, who has a Hold rating on Cisco shares, and a $29.50 price target, writes the company is “executing” very well, he writes, and may win back some business lost to Arista Networks (ANET) and to so-called white box switching equipment:

Based on our conversations, we remain very confident in Cisco’s positioning within the Data Center Switching market. Overall, it feels like the organization is executing exceedingly well in this business. We expect that – on the back of the Nexus 9000 product cycle – the organization will be able to hold, or even improve, its market share in the Data Center Switching business over time. Below, we’ve outlined number of the key takeaways from our conversations [...] The BroadCom-based version of the Nexus 9000 is performing well also. The strategy of building a higher performance, higher port density Data Center switch is paying off – customers can deploy the Nexus 9000 while getting a no cost “insurance policy” of sorts.

Cloud computing operators are seeing limitations with white boxes, he notes:

While White Box certainly remains a threat to Cisco (and Arista) among these ICP customers, a number of ICPs are feeling the inherent difficulties associated with adopting the technology. Specifically, White Box solutions tend to force the ICP (or any customer) into a “technology integrator” role.

And custom-build cloud computing switches are having a hard time being re-used:

Separately, we note that internally-developed Switch solutions (such as Facebook’s “Project Wedge” Top-of-Rack switch) remain centered on a very narrow set of applications. As such, it’s difficult for an Internet Content Provider to take a solution like Project Wedge (which Facebook recently contributed back into the open source community via the Open Compute Project) and use it for their own purposes.

Arista is actually much more exposed to cloud than is Cisco, he notes — a reason he rates Arista stock a Sell:

We remain concerned about Arista’s business with these customers longer term. The company generates roughly 50% of its sales via Cloud Providers – the most sophisticated buyers of Ethernet Switches in the world. Moreover, they’re getting 27-28% operating margin across the business – these types of margins are inconsistent with this customer base. Over time, Arista could feel margin and revenue pressure from these customers via alternative solutions like White Box or internal-development. In Cisco’s case, the organization generates roughly 5% of its $14 billion/year Ethernet Switching business with the ICPs (or roughly 1-2% of company revenue). It’s a very small exposure.

Even better, Cisco is having success selling customers on “ACI,” or application-centric infrastructure, its vision of programmable networking:

Cisco ended the April quarter with 2,650 Nexus 9000 customers and 580 ACI/APIC customers. Internally, they’re very happy with these results. The ACI/APIC version of the 9000, in particular, is tracking ahead of their internal expectations. This is good news. As we’ve said previously, there’s a lot at stake here for Cisco. If they can’t convince customers on the merits of ACI (and the Cisco ASIC-based architecture in general), the Data Center Switching market devolves into a price-per-port game with White Box solutions setting a low reference price versus Cisco. Limkakeng noted that over half of the 580 ACI/APIC customers are proof-of-concepts (this has been a big area of inquiry from investors). The comments make sense – Cisco grew this 580 figure from 300 Q/Q and customers typically take 2-3 months trialing the system before production deployments. As such, they have a lot of POCs out there. Also, it jives with Arista’s recent comments that they aren’t really seeing ACI competitively right now. Limkakeng commented that these POCs – for the most part – will turn into full-blown ACI implementations.

ACI is helped, he writes, by the fact the alternative, “software-defined networking” is “complex, the standards are still getting solidified, and interoperability between vendor solutions remains tenuous.”
Cisco stock today closed down 4 cents at $29.31.

How to Market Your Business While Traveling the World

 The saying goes, "The world is my oyster." In this case, it's also the billboard for marketing your business while you are city or country hopping. Keep in mind that effective marketing doesn't just happen in one place and rarely emerges from a cubicle.
I was recently on an amazing cruise with my wife in the Caribbean. During this time, I was forced to work on cruise Wi-Fi as well as internet hotspots. I was able to live the life I wanted while traveling the world... all while marketing my company online. It actually grew ten percent while I was gone.
Marketing that works comes from keeping your finger on the pulse of the consumer or business you are trying to attract. To stay with the market trends means getting out of the office and into the trenches, in my case, onto the beaches for a while. You have to know what your business really needs, potentially see it from a different perspective.
These tools have allowed me to market wherever I happen to be in the world:

1. SMM-ile and Your Audience Returns the Favor: Social Media Marketing (SMM) platforms like LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are always on and available and ready to accept relevant content and engaging responses to your target audience. Somewhere in the world, someone is awake and tuned in, searching for fresh information that can help them solve a problem or just to provide them with a different way of looking at information for their business or life.
2. Blog City Journaling: Even in longer forms, content can be created and shared no matter where you are in the world. It can be written or it can be video, but either way it's one of the best ways to reach your audience and no one has to know where you are when it was created. Then again, the idea that the marketing messages are coming from new experiences and even exotic locales can enrich your marketing campaigns and keep people tuning in to see where you will be next, and what you're up to. Using a location to create custom marketing messages sends a bigger message about the product or service's relevance and connection to the global community while also serving as the basis for an interesting video or content blog.
3. The Email Marketing Stepchild Deserves Love, Too: E-mail marketing does not have to become the stepchild of today's online marketing capability. Platforms like Constant Contact and ExactTarget serve as an important and meaningful way to communicate with an audience plus it is a tool that works anywhere in the world.
4. Many Marketing Birds and One Stone: You can only do so many things in the day and posting marketing content on multiple platforms may not be possible or necessarily efficient. That's why there are marketing tools -- like HootSuite and TweetDeck -- that do the legwork for you so your billboard is flashing at all hours -- even if you are in-flight or between Wi-Fi connections. For every one marketing message created, these solutions launch it across the social media sea to create the desired ripple effect.
5. Face-to-Face Networking: With technology running the show, it's easy to forget those traditional marketing methods, such as face-to-face marketing, which actually worked quite well in terms of building trust and rapport with your target audience. Traveling allows you to meet with many people you would not otherwise see and even if you don't directly talk about your product or service, the meaningful conversation you have and how you interact with those you meet are still marketing tools at work. Take advantage of this opportunity by planning time in your schedule for in-person networking to build authentic relationships.

Just because your business keeps you on the road doesn't mean you can't successfully promote your business. Do you travel a lot? What other strategies do you use to network and market on the go?

Source : huffingtonpost

Avago, Broadcom deal could put pressure on Qualcomm: analysis

PRESSURE BUILDING UP: A Broadcom/Avago tie-up potentially gives handset makers another viable supplier, giving them more leverage and putting even more pressure on Qualcomm, said IDC analyst Mario Morales. – Reuters

Avago Technologies Ltd's US$37bil (RM135.56bil) deal to buy chipmaker Broadcom Corp creates new competitive challenges for Qualcomm and may force the world's largest mobile chip maker to radically rethink its own strategy.

Qualcomm Inc, which has dominated the market for connectivity chips on smartphones, has been looking to extend its reach into data centres and network infrastructure, but may find its way blocked by an enlarged competitor combining Avago's strength in storage and Broadcom's power in networking. 
"Qualcomm has aspirations of moving into Intel's data centre processor incumbency that the Avago storage and now enterprise networking (from Broadcom) capability directly overlays," said Drexel Hamilton analyst Richard Whittington.

That could result in Qualcomm creating some sort of partnership with Intel Corp, he said, to combat the reach of the new company.

Wall Street analysts generally cheered the deal, despite some fretting about price, saying Broadcom's strength in wireless networking, WiFi and Bluetooth chips is a good complement to Avago's presence in industrial and wired devices.

That presents a challenge to Qualcomm, which finds itself in a tough spot in the maturing microprocessor business, as smartphone makers such as Samsung, Apple Inc and Huawei put more effort into producing their own chips.

Now a Avago/Broadcom tie-up – which will take the name of Broadcom – potentially gives handset makers another viable supplier, giving them more leverage and putting even more pressure on Qualcomm, said IDC analyst Mario Morales.

"The other material impact will come from the adjacencies that Qualcomm is trying to enter now, the data centre, infrastructure and the consumer area," he added. "We see a lot of synergy in the technology they (Avago) are buying."

Qualcomm has hinted that it is looking at new areas.

"I think there's going to be a tremendous amount of growth in computing and resources dedicated to supporting the cloud," Qualcomm chief executive Steve Mollenkopf said at last year's Consumer Electronics Show. "We look at that as an opportunity for a company like ours."

The company did not immediately reply to a request for comment on its strategic plans in response to the Broadcom deal.

Avago/Broadcom is just the latest in a wave of heavyweight mergers and acquisitions reshaping the chip industry.

NXP Semiconductors unveiled a deal in March to buy smaller peer Freescale Semiconductor Ltd. In the same month, Reuters reported that Intel was in talks to buy chipmaker Altera Corp, which many investors expect to result in a deal soon.

That backdrop of consolidation may force Qualcomm's hand.

"Either divest themselves of the business that they are in that is in direct competition with Broadcom – and now Avago – or find a way to grow their presence," said Chris Geier, partner-in-charge of Sikich Investment Banking, assessing Qualcomm's options.

"They are going to have to do one or the other. The status quo for them at this point won't work." – Reuters

Source : thestar

China to turn TV networks into home information centre

China will promote internet integration of television networks, turning them into in-home streaming information centers to allow viewers send real-time feedback to TV stations and get immersed in shows, a top official said.

China’s radio and TV industry should actively implement  “TV+”, similar to the Internet plus initiative currently very popular in China, deputy chief of State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), Tian Jin said.

Besides traditional broadcasting, internet integrated TV can also provide online interactive media, extra content, game consoles, on-demand customised streaming media as well as home networking access.

The networks will offer users a means to track and receive subscribed content and send real-time feedback to TV stations, thus allowing viewers to immerse themselves in their shows.

“This idea will take shape based on the upgraded digital TV networks, and be fused with technology including mobile internet, smart operating system and man-machine interaction system,” Tian was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news agency.

China has 180 million clients using digital television networks currently with only 34 million of them set up with interactive TV, said Tian.

He said the SARFT is considering a large-scale TV network overhaul, an increase of bandwidth and speed of information transmission, and will extend to intelligent terminals such as mobile phones, pads and digital TV.

Source : financialexpress

Everything You Need to Know About Android Auto

Reviewers say it trounces old-school in-car navigation systems

Google’s operating system for cars has finally arrived. Android Auto, which lets drivers control popular smartphone apps through their car’s dashboard interface, is now available in the 2015 Hyundai Sonata and will be rolled out to additional vehicles in the future.

Here are the key insights from reviewers at The Verge and the Wall Street Journal who have taken Android Auto for a test drive.

Android Auto truly replaces your phone
While driving, Google wants you to put your phone away completely and rely on Android Auto to make phone calls, get directions, queue up music and even send texts. Drivers are locked out of their smartphones while the device is connected to Android Auto. Apps like Maps are as fully-featured through the car as they are on a smartphone (though you can’t look up walking or transit directions).

You’ll be doing a lot of talking
In order to increase driver safety, Android Auto encourages people to use voice commands instead of having drivers type information. You can simply speak to ask Android Auto for directions or to place a call. The app itself is pretty talky as well. For instance, it will read aloud text messages you receive and also read back texts that you dictate before you send them off to friends.

Music is at your fingertips
Listening to music is one of the most common activities in the car, and it’s a key part of Anroid Auto. Currently compatible services include Google Play Music, Spotify and iHeartRadio (Pandora isn’t currently supported). Users can use voice search to find songs or artists, though reviewers said the feature worked much better with Google Play Music than with third-party apps. There’s also a quirk that limits how far drivers can scroll through a playlist in order to prevent long periods of distraction from the road, so it would be hard to comb through a whole music library using the app.

Your car is now your personal assistant
In addition to expected features like navigation and music playback, Android Auto makes use of Google’s digital assistant Google Now to offer context-sensitive suggestions for getting through your day. The app may present navigation directions to your office when you get in the car in the morning, for example, or present the route home when you boot up the car in the evening.

Overall, reviewers tended to agree that Android Auto is a big step up from the clunky navigation systems that have become standard in many new cars. With Apple’s CarPlay also planned to roll out to more vehicles soon, expect the smartphone to soon become a standard tool for in-car navigation and communication.

Android M according to expected

Google I/O 2015: Android M, new Photo service, Brillo and more that is expected

 

Google I/O opens today and what we know for sure is that Android M will be showcased at the event. As Google’s biggest developer conference looms, we take a look everything that is expected, at least according to the rumour mills.

Android M: The next version of Android is a given at the Google I/O conference. Of course, Android M’s roll-out for consumers won’t take place till October or even later, but the developer preview will be shown.
So what will be new in Android M? Rumours says that Google will finally be taking user privacy seriously and plans to tweak privacy controls for apps in Android M. The feature will give users an option to decide what information they want to share with apps. Currently Android does not allow users to restrict permissions like location, contacts, messaging, etc when they install an app.

Another report on Android Police says Google plans to improve battery life in Android OS and is also working on improving RAM efficiency.  The report says that Google wants to reduces the number of “location checkins.” With Google, one is never really sure what the OS will offer and these rumours can never be taken as 100 percent sure.

New photo sharing service:  Google will showcase a new photo sharing service that will no longer be linked to Google +, and will allow Facebook and Twitter sharing, said a Bloomberg report.

A photo-sharing service from Google like Yahoo’s Flickr will be an interesting offer and it remains to be seen if Google will dole-out extra cloud storage space for users who sign up for such a service, if it is launched.
Brillo for Internet-of-Things: Google is also looking at powering low-memory smart home devices like smart bulbs, thermostats and is working on Brillo, an OS for these devices. Reports on The Information (to read full article users will need to subscribe) and Fortune said that Google’s Brillo OS will run on devices with 64 or 32 MB of RAM and that it will be part of Android brand.

Brillo will not be a part of Nest, which was acquired by Google, said the reports. It remains to be seen if Brillo actually makes an appearance in Sundar Pichai’s keynote on Thursday, or if this will be a separate launch later on.

Android Wear: Google I/O’s schedule mentions one session titled Your App and always-on screen, which indicates a new feature for Android Wear. The session talks about how Android Wear’s new always-on feature “transforms the watch into whatever app” a user is on from map to shopping list to fitness. The session will help developers design and build for always-on screens.
Given that Apple Watch has been rolled-out, it will be interesting to watch how Google will spruce up Android Wear to fight off the Apple challenge.

Android Auto: Android Auto also has its own dedicated sessions at the I/O Conference and it will discuss Android Auto APIs that allow developers to bring existing audio and messaging apps to the car. Google’s driverless cars are also expected to hit the road this summer in the US and thus it remains to be seen how Android Auto has evolved.

In addition to these, Google will also showcase Google Cast, its new version of the mirroring Chromecast device, as well give more news on Google Earth and real-time updates.
Of course the most important question that everyone will be asking that I/O still remains only one: What will M finally stand for in Android M?

Source: indianexpress

How to See Your Site Through Google's Eyes

Marketers and business owners everywhere have been clamoring to get the most visibility on Google since the search engine rose to popularity back in the early 2000s. Search engine optimization (SEO) once was a simple matter of stuffing your site full of all the things that Google wanted to see, but as Google released more and more sophisticated algorithm updates, it became much harder to figure out exactly what Google wants to see and exactly how your site stacks up.

Today, there are a handful of solid principles that govern how sites are ranked in search engines; put simply, if you offer your users a great overall experience, you'll end up ranking higher. But this principle is a little too ambiguous and not actionable enough for most marketers, who would give anything to be able to see their site through Google's eyes.

While there is no easy way to objectively quantify your chances of achieving a certain rank, seeing your site through Google's eyes is actually a possibility today. Leveraging a series of tools that Google itself makes available for free, you can determine where you stand in the grand landscape of the web and make critical adjustments to maximize your potential rank.

Determining Your Mobile Compliance
Mobile-friendliness is a big deal, especially after Google's major "Mobilegeddon" update. Currently, any site that isn't deemed to be "mobile-friendly" is ranking much lower, on both mobile and desktop searches, and that ranking divide will only grow as businesses have more time and fewer excuses not to optimize their websites for mobile devices. You can see for yourself whether your site is mobile-friendly by checking on your own smartphone and/or tablet, but how can you be sure that Google sees your site the same way? Google has a very easy-to-use mobile-friendly test you can take. Simply put in your URL, and Google will tell you instantly whether it has a mobile-friendly design by Google's standards.

Checking Site Speed and Diagnostics
The performance of your website also has a significant bearing on your overall domain authority; a well-functioning site with consistent high speed will rank much higher than one with performance issues or lagging load times. If you log into Google Search Console and take a look at the dashboard, you'll see a section called "Site Errors," and three small sections indicating the current health of your site. If you see green checkmarks under "DNS," "Server Connectivity," and "Robots.txt fetch," your site is up and running, and there are no issues preventing Google from seeing your site. You can also run a speed test using Google's Developer tools to see how fast your site is currently performing.

Scouting for Indexed Pages
To determine how many pages of your site are currently being indexed by Google, head back into Search Console. Go to Google Index and click on "Index Status." Here, you'll see the total number of pages Google has indexed from your site. Compare this number to your current sitemap--if there are any discrepancies not tied to intentional page blocking on your part, there could be an indexing problem with some of your pages. Head to "Crawl Errors" under the "Crawl" tab to see whether there are any 404 errors--these are the usual culprits. Repair 404 errors by setting up 301 redirects; otherwise you could lose out on some valuable traffic and authority.

Determining Meta Content Issues
In Search Console, you can also see how Google evaluates your meta information, such as your page titles and meta descriptions. Head to "Search Appearance" and click on "HTML Improvements." Here, you'll be able to see whether your site has any duplicate meta descriptions or title tags that need to be fixed (or any that are missing).

Checking Your Microdata
If you use any structured microdata on your site (and you should, due to the growing power of the Knowledge Graph), you can check out how your data appears by clicking on "Structured Data" under "Search Appearance." This will show you exactly how Google sees the microdata on your site, and whether you need to take any corrective actions.
Monitoring Your Behavior Flow
You can also see how Google views the user experience of your site by logging into Google Analytics and checking out the Behavior Flow. Here, you'll see the path the average user takes on your site. If you notice your bounce rate is particularly high for one or a group of pages, you'll need to work to improve those numbers. High bounce rates lead to lower domain authority, while more consistent site visits are seen as representative of a better user experience.

Reviewing Your External Links
You might consider this cheating because it's not actually a tool that Google offers--it's one developed by the search engine experts over at Moz. Open Site Explorer, sometimes referred to as the "search engine for links," will show you all the links on the web currently pointing to your domain, and should give you a pretty good idea of what Google sees when analyzing your backlink profile. Here, if you see any links that could be evaluated as low authority or spammy, you can take immediate action to get rid of them--in fact, the paid version of Open Site Explorer actually ranks the riskiness of each individual link.

Once you understand how Google views your site, you can determine the key areas of your site that you need to improve and take action to salvage your domain authority and rank. In addition to these site structure fundamentals, you'll need to make sure your ongoing content and social strategies are in order--with those pillars in place and a clean bill of health from Google's diagnostic tools, there should be nothing stopping you from getting the greatest possible search engine visibility.

Source : huffingtonpost

Is SEO Dead? Long Live Social Search!

Let’s start with the basics of SEO. A search engine ranks for content relevance with traits like comprehensiveness, freshness and ease of use. It then serves up content based on a digital algorithm that is tested and refined by user interaction. Often, however, basic search is only a crude indicator of intent. It’s designed by the masses, and therefore it’s often wrong.

Enter the new wave of intent modeling. The next generation of search will be informed by social—sometimes referred to as social search. In other words, search engines will increasingly be driven by personal interaction such as voting, ranking, and commenting in order to better understand the intent of the reader. This social layer will add a new, personalized dimension to search results.

Social search is amplified by the fact that social content is on the rise. People are creating content as fast as they are consuming it. I first noticed this phenomenon a few years back while shopping for a Halloween costume. The leading organic search result was a Pinterest page. “Wow,” I thought, “How have brands missed this opportunity? Why didn’t Target or the Halloween Store do a better job finding the algorithm to pop into my reader?”

The fact is, it’s getting harder and harder for brands to compete with the power of the personal network. According to Search Marketing Land, a significant ratio of the top 100 results for more queries is consumer-generated media such as blogs and social networks. This is why social media is so important to brands. If you’re still focusing on outbound communications and search engine optimization without building a groundswell of social content, you’re likely losing in the war for online eyeballs.

So add social search to your kit of SEO and paid search. Building influencers, online communities, and social at scale is the new search. Forward thinking marketers are beginning to use social search to understand the social behavior of their clients and acting on it.

If social search is discovery, traditional search is the validation of that discovery. Brands are using social data to understand consumer intent and pushing out relevant data to consumers—before they even know they’re interested—by using sophisticated purchase intent models.

So tell me Google, what might I be interested in? No hints this time around. Or perhaps this is one for Watson?

Source : business2community

SEO Strategy During A Website Redesign Or Migration

Launching a new version of your website? If so, check out columnist Thomas Stern's basic guide to preserving your SEO equity in the process.

 

Whether you’ve decided to purchase a new domain or update your existing website, it’s essential to plan ahead to avoid potentially devastating SEO issues. Website relaunches, especially those that involve a change of domain, can dissolve a brand’s digital footprint and negatively impact sales driven from search.
You can protect the search equity you’ve worked hard to build and discover new opportunities for optimization by strategically planning your transition. This resource will cover how to perform the SEO checks needed to help your website maintain — and even improve — its digital dominance.
Below are some of the most important optimization elements to watch, but we recommend a complete SEO analysis to cover the many components of a website redesign.

Know Your Website

During a website update, it is possible that your page URLs may change (even if you aren’t moving to a new domain). If not handled properly, this can result in a loss of individual page rankings, culminating in a loss of overall site visibility in search engines. To avoid rebuilding search authority from scratch, webmasters must inform search engines of these URL changes.
Start by creating a list of all the URLs on your website, and identify any pages that will need to be rerouted with a permanent 301 redirect. Many times, webmasters will skip implementing redirects for pages with minimal traffic; however, I recommend redirecting all existing site pages whose URLs are changing, as these URLs may still provide some value for internal linking and SEO signals.
There are a number of online tools, such as Screaming Frog, that you can use to crawl your website and help create this list. After an automated report, it is important to manually review your list and sync each page with a URL on the new site. If there are fewer pages on your new website, make sure every page on your current site is being directed towards a new, live page. Additionally, be sure to review all subdomains to ensure all URLs are accounted for before migration.
A 1:1 page redirect matches pages from your old site to corresponding pages on the new site. This can result in more work, but gives visitors a more consistent user experience. For pages lacking a page-to-page redirect, match pages with similar content to preserve relevancy to users and value in search.
Test single pages from your current site with a redirect to the new site to see if they are appearing in Google search results. When you’re satisfied that Google acknowledges your updates, you may continue with a complete site update. Avoid downtime and unexpected errors by updating chunks of your website at a time. Additionally, if you have a new domain, add this to Google Webmaster Tools, and submit a sitemap to inform Google your new content is live.

Analyze Inbound Links

Inbound links help develop authority for your pages in search. As URLs change, links that point to your digital content will need to be updated.
Perform an inbound link audit to determine your link profile and create a list of pages that must be reclaimed, then sort results by sites with the highest domain authority and relevance. Direct links are preferred over redirected links because they have less moving parts and provide a faster, clearer path to content.
Ideally, you should contact the webmaster hosting each link pointing to your site and request for them to update the URL. If this is not attainable due to the number of links or webmaster inaccessibility, preserve your link juice by establishing 301 redirects that point old URLs to new ones.
If you are purchasing a new URL that was previously hosting another brand’s site, understand that you will often inherit their backlink profile. Your brand must investigate the source of these backlinks and update them accordingly to preserve or remove connections as needed.

Conduct An SEO Audit

An SEO audit can identify the strengths, weaknesses, risks, and opportunities of your current website. Use this knowledge to construct a road map of what needs to be carried over and what should be left behind. Find where your brand can improve its content and behind-the-scenes optimization, and implement changes with your website update.
What To Look For:

• Missing page titles
• Duplicate page titles
• Page titles over 512 pixels
• Page titles below 200 pixels
• Missing H1 tags
• Duplicate H1 tags
• Multiple H1 tags
• Missing meta descriptions
• Duplicate meta descriptions
• Meta descriptions over 923 pixels
• Canonical tags
• Canonicalisation
• Broken internal/external links
• Structured markup usage (correct tagging, applicable page usage)
• Image alt text
• XML sitemap
• Robots.txt
• Duplicate content
• Pages indexed by Google
• Site speed and performance
• URL structure

Live And Breathe Analytics

What To Look For:

• Crawl errors
• Mobile usability
• Broken links (internal and external)
• Link count (internal and external)
• Pages indexed
• Top keywords driving traffic
• Organic search traffic

Conclusion

This migration process can be time consuming and tedious with so many moving pieces to watch, but it is essential for the growth of your brand and its digital visibility.
Be sure to download your backup files to protect your assets in case of an unseen disaster during the relocation. Complete your move before canceling any hosting plan to protect your files and database information. Once you are confident in the transition of your website data, ease back on monitoring data so you can focus on promoting your site and maintaining SEO through content and optimization based on user trends.

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Source : searchengineland

3 Insanely Effective Ways to Promote Your Mobile App Through Existing Audiences

It’s fairly clear that the world has gone mobile. As I walk down the street in NYC, I have to duck and dodge every few minutes to avoid running into someone with their head down, nose in their phone.

No wonder mobile apps have become some prevalent. While I still contest that many (if not most) businesses don’t actually need to create an app (but rather just create a mobile-optimized website), many apps are the business onto themselves. And like any business, they need to implement a marketing strategy – or strategies – to succeed.

One extremely powerful method for marketing a business – be it a service or a produce (or an app) – is to tap into existing audiences. Here are three ways to do just that….

Search Engine Optimization

SEO isn’t appropriate for all apps. Mobile game apps, for example, probably aren’t going to benefit much from focusing a lot of effort on search engine optimization. Although mobile game designers can try to rank for terms like “best mobile games” or “best iPhone game,” the competition is likely too stiff, and the initial efforts are better spent elsewhere.

For apps in a specific niche, like events apps for example, search engine optimization can go a long way by helping you tap into existing demand.

Bar World, for example, is a nightlife and events app that is currently focusing on the San Diego area. Topic pages focusing on events and nightlife for that specific city are helping the app slowly move up in the search engines for keywords that their ideal customers may be searching for.
The key here is to figure out who your user base is, what they might be looking for, and how to get in front of them at the moment that they are looking for it. This can be very powerful.

Reddit Advertising

This is something I am personally currently experimenting with, but I can definitely see a ton of potential here.
Reddit has a huge community, they are all relatively young, and digitally active. In other words, the perfect pool of potential users for a mobile app.
There are also countless subreddits on any topic you can imagine. That means that there is a ready-made community that you can target with your advertising.
If a subscription beef jerky business can be successful with Reddit ads, chances are you can find a way to utilize these ads for your mobile app.
But the best part is…the ads are ridiculously cheap. Especially when you compare the cost to the likes of Facebook or Google ads.

Go Offline

It might seem strange to go offline to market a product that is digital. But that is exactly the strategy that dating app Tinder used to gain traction.

Rather than focusing solely on digital advertising and promotion, founders wooed college students into using the app. This did several things…

It injected an initial user base, which is critical for an app focused on social interaction. But it also injected the right type of user base – a user base that has influence. This helped spread the app outside of the organizations to which the app was initially pitched.

Find a community of target users offline and get in front of them. After all, while the product maybe digital, your customers are still real, physical people.

Source : business2community

Aruba Announces 802.11ac Wave 2 Wireless Access Points

The company's new APs will come with an enhanced version of its ClientMatch technology and integrated beacon capabilities.

Aruba Networks is unveiling a new series of 802.11ac Wave 2 access points that officials say will address the growing demand for greater WiFi performance.

The company, which Hewlett-Packard is in the process of acquiring for about $3 billion, on May 27 introduced the Aruba 320 series of access points (APs), which come not only with the dynamic multi-user multiple input/multiple output (MU-MIMO) capabilities enabled by the Wave 2 standard, but also with Aruba's Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) beacons.

In addition, the new APs come with an enhanced version of Aruba's ClientMatch technology that includes awareness of Wave 2 MU-MIMO clients, which officials said will lead to greater overall network capacity.

The new APs, which will be available in the third quarter, come as the pressure on wireless networks continues to grow as more of the world goes mobile, the number of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets continue to proliferate, the Internet of things  (IoT) takes hold and the use of video rapidly increases.

Aruba officials noted that by 2018, 75 percent of workers in large organizations will interact with bandwidth-intensive video three times a day. In its latest annual Visual Networking Index released May 27, Cisco Systems officials said that by 2019, video will account for 80 percent of all Internet traffic, up from 67 percent last year. In addition, the Cisco report found that by 2019, 53 percent of monthly Internet traffic worldwide will come from WiFi connections, up from 42 percent in 2014. The number of Internet users and connected devices will grow rapidly, machine-to-machine (M2M) will increase and adoption of Internet of everything (IoE) technology will accelerate.

The market for 802.11ac-compliant product—from APs to routers—is growing rapidly. According to a report in April from ABI Research analysts, by the end of the year, about 71 million consumer WiFi devices based on the 802.11ac standards will ship worldwide. The overall global consumer WiFi device market grew by 5 percent last year, the firm found.

The 802.11ac standard was ratified by the IEEE at the end of 2013, offering up to three times the speed and improved bandwidth increases over its predecessor, 802.11n. As a result, more devices can be connected to the network without impacting the network performance too much. In addition, 802.11ac works in two bands—the 2.4GHz band, where WiFi previously was limited to, and in the 5GHz band.

Wave 2 will bring even greater speeds and wireless ranges, enabling better performance over Wave 1. With MU-MIMO, 802.11ac Wave 2 will make it easier for the growing numbers of mobile devices to share WiFi bandwidth and ease performance issues on the network. Tech vendors are working to answer the call for Wave 2-enabled products, from APs to systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) to devices, with ramping expected later this year.

 key capability in Aruba's 320 series APs is the enhanced ClientMatch technology. Company officials first launched ClientMatch in 2013 as part of its ArubaOS 6.3 operating system. Before ClientMatch, devices tended to decide which access points to connect to, choosing what Aruba officials at the time said weren't always the best ones. ClientMatch shifted the connection decision away from the devices and to the OS to ensure that as they move around the enterprise, they always connected to the best possible Aruba AP.

The enhanced ClientMatch—which will be available next month as part of ArubaOS 6.4.4—takes Wave 2 MU-MIMO clients into account, automatically steering and grouping the devices together on Aruba 320 series APs and enabling the APs to transmit data to multiple Wave 2-enabled devices at the same time. This will increase network capacity, resulting in up to a 42 percent improvement in performance over Wave 2 solutions from competitors that don't have the new ClientMatch technology, according to Aruba officials.

In addition, integrating BLE Aruba Beacons into the 320 series APs means organizations can remotely manage, monitor and configure their battery-operated Beacons through the cloud rather than having to install a USB version of the Aruba Beacon on the company's access points.

The 320 series APs will start at $1,395 when they become available in the third quarter.

Source : - eweek

RiT Intros Beamcaster 2.0 for Secure High-Speed Connectivity

RiT Launches Beamcaster 2.0 for secure high speed wireless enterprise connectivity -- Wireless optical solution significantly reduces hardware requirements and installation time

RiT Technologies, a leading provider of IIM and structured cabling solutions and a developer of an innovative indoor optical wireless technology solution, announced today the launch of Beamcaster 2.0, a wireless optical network with a new system design significantly lowering the total solution cost per user. By increasing the number of users that are supported by each smart outlet (SO) from one to six, enabling each system to support 48 users, high density open space environments can experience secure, high bandwidth communications networks with significantly lower costs and faster deployments. One large telecommunications provider in Asia estimates that this new design results in an installation time of 1-2 days compared with several weeks to install a comparable secure and high bandwidth wireline network.

Beamcaster 2.0 is designed for environments that require secure communications, high bandwidth with low latency, and scalability to support rapid growth. The solution provides point-to-multipoint wireless optical communications with speeds of up to 1Gbps for each SO. Beamcaster 2.0’s optical transmissions are highly secure and difficult to hack or intercept. In addition, Beamcaster 2.0 is easy to install and can adjust easily to physical layout changes and employee moves.

The previous version, Beamcaster 1.0 is currently deployed at several sites in North America and Asia, with the latest successful deployment in China for a leading IT company. A telecom operator in APAC has expressed interest in using Beamcaster 2.0 to provide connectivity as a service where the savings from this new technology can be passed down to their customers. Several consumer product manufacturers showed interest in using this technology to avoid leakage of confidential product information and intellectual property that can occur using standard wireless networks.

“Asia has unique working conditions that can benefit from solutions that support high density environments”, said Ron Kamini, Head of Products Management at RiT. “More and more companies in this region need to share large files securely at high speeds and this technology provides them with more economical and flexible connectivity that grows with them.”

RiT’s wireless optical solution Beamcaster 2.0 will be demonstrated next week at CommunicAsia, June 2 -- June 5, at Marina Bay Sands Singapore, at Booth BA3-12. Beamcaster 2.0 will be commercially available in Q4 2015. RiT will also have on display a robot that can share high volumes of production data securely while in motion, using RiT's innovative wireless optical technology.

About RiT Technologies 
 
RiT Technologies (NASDAQ: RITT), is a leading provider of IIM and structured cabling solutions and a developer of an innovative indoor optical wireless technology solution. The RiT IIM products provide network utilization for data centers, communication rooms and work space environments. They help companies plan and provision, monitor and troubleshoot their communications networks, maximizing utilization, reliability and physical security of the network while minimizing unplanned downtime. The RiT solutions are deployed around the world in a broad range of organizations, including data centers in corporate organizations, government agencies, financial institutions, airport authorities, healthcare and education institutions and more. Our BeamCaster™ product is an innovative indoor optical wireless networking technology solution designed to help customers streamline deployment, reduce infrastructure design, installation and maintenance complexity and enhance security in a cost effective way. RiT’s shares are traded on the NASDAQ Capital Market under the symbol RITT. For more information, please visit: www.rittech.com

Source : - newsfactor