Posts in Category: industry

3 Ways Technology Made Communication Possible Where It Wasn’t

Photo by Aler Kiv on Unsplash

They say technology dehumanizes us. But not everyone buys it. It changes us, granted, but does it strip us of what makes us human – that is, exercise our intellect? As onlookers of the food chain, humans have the luxurious ability to imagine and then create a tool for just about anything. So it would appear that technology not only doesn’t dehumanize us, it defines us.

Having more options never hurt anyone. Professor Stephen Hawking surely agrees. He’d find it very hard (harder than it already is) to bless the scientific community with his ideas without the assistive technology that enables him to speak. A stranded person would give an arm and a leg for a radio. A long-distance relationship would be hard to bear without instant messaging. And so on, and so forth. Communication has benefited immensely from technological feats like the telephone, the radio, and the Internet. Below, we will focus on three often-overlooked scenarios where communication, in the absence of technology, can be a serious burden

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Unified Communications to Gain Serious Traction by 2019

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Despite increased awareness about Unified Communications (UC) solutions, many businesses are slow to upgrade, or downright reluctant to do so. Reportlinker shares some numbers as part of a recent market analysis, and predicts a serious uptick in adoption over the next three years.

Compared to 2014, UC adoption in 2015 has not been considerably higher. In fact, some parts of the globe have fallen short of expectations, according to various market researchers, including the fine gents at IDC. But Reportlinker is optimistic about the next few years, projecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.42 per cent for the global UC 2.0 services market over the period 2015-2019

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5 Cloud Myths That Seriously Need to Go Away

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Anyone landing on this page should already be acquainted with terms like public and private cloud, SaaS, IaaS, Paas, hybrid cloud, etc., so we’ll spare you the agony of reading first-grade tech literature. However, as we noted in the past time and time again, not everyone who grasps cloud computing knows what to fear and what to embrace.

For example, security remains a top concern even for tech leaders, yet cloud vendors have already proved that their heuristic systems can be much more effective at stopping cybercriminals in their tracks. But then there are also some exaggerated benefits, like the cloud being the cheaper solution 100% of the time, or that everything just works in the cloud. Below, we deal a heavy blow to 5 relentless myths about cloud computing that always claw their way up tech leaders’ spines, no matter how much evidence mounts against them.

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How Often Do You Pull Out Your “Digital Cigarette?”

Contextual analytics is a useful tool for assessing effectiveness of your advertising efforts. Knowing when and where your customers are likely to view your ads can make or break your campaign, so it’s important to check the trends every now and then.

People are social creatures. They like to get together and chat when they finish work or during weekends, be it at home, in another person’s home, in bars and restaurants, clubs, art galleries, etc. But people also do a lot of their communication and socializing on their smartphones. In fact, the smartphone has become every marketer’s best bet in terms of platform

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The Real Reason Why Millenials Aren’t Answering Their Phones

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When speaker Ryan Jenkins was approached by an audience member saying that his Millennial workforce was much more comfortable with texting compared to phone calls, he took it as further evidence that this was indeed the case and identified five reasons why this might be.

To his credit, Jenkins dots the “i” with some of his observations. Chief among them is the presumptuous nature of the practice, which implies that you drop everything to pick up the phone, without any fair warning as to what the caller has to say and how it will affect your workflow, or for how long. But that’s where I draw the line regarding the negative side of voice calls. Characterizations like time consuming, distracting, superfluous, and ineffective are the product of a subjective analysis, even though none of these are false either

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Research Uncovers Strong Correlation Between Competition and Creativity

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Collaboration has some undeniable perks, from brainstorming to actually building upon an idea. But what about creating things that don’t require the input of an entire team? A logo, for instance. Can the rivalry between a bunch of designers racing to draw the best design for one paying company actually improve the outcome? As it turns out, it can. But only when the competition dial is turned to just the right level

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VR Conferencing Could Soon Be a “Reality”

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One of the best assets in the Unified Communications suite, video conferencing is enjoying a fair dose of popularity among adopters, as enterprises and small businesses alike demand higher-quality, lower-cost video tech to reduce travel and improve collaboration. Just like mobility took Africa by storm before the country could even set up landlines, so could VR take on the business sector before everyone has a chance to adjust their webcam.

In its latest report detailing the top technological trends, Juniper identifies 2016 as the watershed year for VR headsets, both in terms of product launches and consumer roll-outs

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3 (Busted) Myths About Communication

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

The Unified Communications (UC) market is chock full of media meant to promote the use of technology for communication and collaboration. Overall, that’s a good thing. But the nature of the materials is often abstract, trading the human element for the tech jargon.

In reality, technology only assists the transmission of information, which can actually detrimental to communications in the absence of basic skills, such as friendliness, feedback, or eye contact (in the case of video calling). Below, we bust three myths about “good communication” that get tossed around in marketing materials, including counter-marketing ones

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Find Out Which Platforms Sell Your Product

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Our experience with code has taught us that platform optimization plays a crucial role in grabbing and retaining a customer base – essentially creating your market share. Ship a half-baked app and customer loyalty is immediately affected. Ship a polished, seamless, airtight experience and they’re yours to keep.

Whether you sell physical goods or services, online or offline, it helps to know what devices people own. Smartphones and tablets have become de-facto platforms for ad delivery and shopping, and marketers everywhere strive to deliver a compelling viewing experience on these gizmos.

Device ownership heavily determines the way people

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Female Entrepreneurs – Leaders Born from “Disobedience”

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You might have heard us say this before, but here at 4PSA many of our software engineers are girls – more than what you’d find in a traditional tech company. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. We’re ‘naughty’ like that 😀

As it turns out, there are quite a few benefits to “a little bit of naughtiness or disobedience,” as highlighted by Lauren Knight, author of a column on parenting in the Washington Post. Disobedient children are entrepreneurial spirits that end up earning more as adults, research shows.

Truth be told, the signs have always been there. Only by challenging the status quo do we think outside the box, and it takes wits to defy authority as a child. Disobedient children are good candidates for

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