How to Build Trust in a Virtual Workplace - Keith Ferrazzi by Keith Ferrazzi | 2:00 PM October 8, 2012 Teams can’t function well when co-workers don’t trust one another. Building and maintaining trust in the traditional, physical workplace is difficult enough, but the process is even tougher in a virtual environment, where people often have to work with people they haven’t met in person. Some biologists believe that we are hardwired to distrust everyone except our own family members. Leverage “swift trust.” There are two ways to assure you take best advantage of the benefits of swift trust. Pro-actively build interpersonal trust. Managers can help encourage such personal connections by starting meetings with a “Take 5″ for people to talk about what’s been happening in their lives, both professionally and personally. A member of a virtual team in one research study happened to live in the Washington, D.C. area during the sniper attacks in 2002. Communicate with predictability. Share and rotate power.
How Much Does It Cost to Build a Mobile App? The cost of going mobile can be quite pricey for businesses, new research shows. A study by backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform provider AnyPresence revealed the majority of companies, 54 percent, are spending between $25,000 and $100,000 on each mobile apps they develop, whether it be for customer or employee use. Additionally, another quarter are investing more than $100,000 into each app. "The high cost of development among respondents reflects the inherent complexity of enterprise apps," said Richard Mendis, AnyPresence chief marketing officer and co-founder. "Whether the app is targeted at employees, partner, or customers, enterprise mobile applications can have sophisticated integration, security and performance needs that often make them more complex to develop, test and maintain than the typical consumer app." [The Best Apps For... The study found businesses are developing a mix of customer-facing, employee-facing and partner apps.
Happy 30th birthday, compact disc! Watch a demo from the first TED, in 1984 Happy 30th birthday, compact disc. The CD was introduced on October 1, 1982 — but in early 1984 it was still slowly rolling out to consumer markets. In this surprising demo onstage at the very first TED, in February 1984, Mickey Schulhof of the Sony Corporation describes and then demonstrates the use of “compact disc digital audio.” In the screengrab above, Mickey Schulhof of Sony is saying: “The disc itself is about 5 inches in diameter. It can record one hour of stereo music on one side — and it is only a one-sided disc, it’s not meant to be played on two sides…” Love this? PS: The inevitable animated gif:
DIY App Builders: a Buying Guide — www.enterpriseappstoday.com Posted January 21, 2014 By Paul RubensFeedback Sophisticated technology makes it possible for even non-developers to create useful software applications. Here we list of a few of the available DIY app building programs. Many companies' IT departments are strapped for cash and human resources, which means that business users don't always have access to the software applications they would like. Users in enterprises around the world have responded by building their own software apps - for their own use, for use in their departments or, increasingly, for customers' use. This post on an Intel blog, written by a software architect, describes how "some of my colleagues outside of IT built a little app that provides mobile access to real-time conference room availability so you can find an empty room" to address a problem of often overbooked meeting space at the company. This may not always be the case, however. Other differentiators include: A short list of DIY app services follows. Knack.
Walmart's Angry Workers Use A Web Spoof To Rain On The Company's Anniversary This week, Walmart workers in 12 states have walked off the job, in a wave of strikes set off today with a protest outside the investors’ meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas. Their numbers are tiny so far: mere dozens out of 1.4 million Walmart employees nationwide; a workers’ organization, OUR Walmart, claims just 5,000 dues-paying members, most of whom are still not on strike. But online, their impact is outsized. Walmart has set up a website, Walmart 50, commemorating its 50th anniversary with lots of heartwarming videos from employees, whom it calls "associates." OUR Walmart has its own website, Walmartat50.org, with its own videos. They’re not as upbeat about the anniversary, to say the least. The videos on Walmart’s own site take place in a world in which Walmart, which claims an average hourly wage of $12.54 for full-time workers (most are part-time), is a great place to build a career. Walmart could not be reached for comment.
AC Cloud: Visual Development in the Cloud - App development for Mobile and Desktop with Application Craft To sign in to your account, you need to go to your custom sub-domain, where you will be prompted to enter your username and password. Choose from the list below, or enter your subdomain in the field provided.
Breakdown: A Strategy for Engaging Passion Communities Left: A social network mapped out, this one is of influential photographer Kris Krug’s social graph. These breakdown posts often contain content that didn’t fit into research reports, and contain input from industry experts or deeper client engagements, see other ‘breakdown‘ posts. Unsure how to deal with the most passionate communities your market has to offer? One of Altimeter’s large brand clients was struggling with this same question, a brand cannot simply waltz in without fully realizing the commitment being made and impact to brand relations. Our client specifically wanted to know from myself and colleague Sr Researcher Christine Tran on the “best way to enter and exit a passion community”. A Passion Community Defined: Is one that contains highly focused brand and lifestyle advocates often on a third-party (one which you have no control over) website that the brand does not manage. Passion Community Scenarios Key Principals of Passion Community Engagement Related Resources
Building Smartphone-Optimized Websites - Webmasters Details of recommendations Google supports smartphone-optimized sites in three configurations: Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device. This is Google's recommended configuration.Sites that dynamically serve all devices on the same set of URLs, but each URL serves different HTML (and CSS) depending on whether the user agent is a desktop or a mobile device.Sites that have separate mobile and desktop URLs. On this page we will look at how to implement each of these configurations. Responsive web design Responsive web design is a setup where the server always sends the same HTML code to all devices and CSS is used to alter the rendering of the page on the device using media queries. A CSS media query we recommend to use for smartphones is: @media only screen and (max-width: 640px) {...} Why responsive design <?
The High Price of Social Media Risk Management - Alexandra Samuel by Alexandra Samuel | 4:32 PM October 19, 2012 In the event of uproar, please invoke social media policy. That’s the in-case-of-emergency sign that might as well hover over the desk of any communications manager, as the latest social media crisis reminds us. This week, it’s The New York Times that finds itself in hot water, after contributor Andrew Goldman responded to a critical tweet with a reply that public editor Margaret Sullivan aptly characterized as “needlessly rude and insulting.” The Times responded by invoking its social media standards — even though it has no written social media policy. “[Y]ou are a Times journalist, and your online behavior should be appropriate for a Times journalist. Working from this principle, the Times suspended Goldman from his weekly column for the next four weeks. Right result — wrong reasons. Yes, Goldman needs to be held accountable for his tweet. After all, like most of us, journalists now live much of their lives online.