Are you a keen radio listener? Especially in the big cities, where traffic jams are frequent, the morning radio broadcast or the latest music hits can kill the boredom and bring some light in your day. But in the recent years, with the latest advancements in the technological field, there has been a change in the way people listen to their favorite radio stations. The fact that the old-fashioned radio receivers are treated as antiques and soon will find their place in the museum shows that the conventional radio has evolved into something new – the internet radio. For example BGLiveRadio is an internet radio available for iOS and OSX. Download it now from the Mac AppStore for Free. The online internet radio can offer much more things than its predecessor. It can be accessed via internet browser or specially developed application, both on PCs and smartphones. The principles of functioning are pretty much the same – there still an encoder, a server which works as a transmitter and a second device which plays the role of a receiver, equipped with player/plug-in that deciphers the signal. Check out Traffic Radio Station. It is internet radio avaiavailable for iOS and Android. Download it now from the Mac AppStore for Free. If you still haven’t listened to an online internet radio, the list with advantages below can serve as motivation: Not just bigger, but immense range of radios from all over the world; Available anytime, anywhere – if there is an internet connectivity, there will be internet radio streaming too; Allows totally new ways of advertising and engaging the end user; Not so long ago, radio transmitters had really limited scope and this respectively meant that they provided only a particular number of stations, available in a particular country. So you are fan of that great local radio show that is broadcasted every evening. OK but in the summer you decide to go on a vacation for 2 weeks. Bye Bye favorite radio broadcast. Well that is not necessary anymore. There are numerous applications that offer very wide range of wireless internet radios. Just like SHOUTcast. It is cross-platform software for streaming media over the Internet. Part of it is SHOUTcast Radio which provides the user with a directory of SHOUTcast internet music radios. To make it clearer let’s see some stats. Founded in 1999, in July 2011, SHOUTcast Radio offers more than 45 000 worldwide stations and at peak hours has more than 900 000 listeners. Can you imagine it – holding thousands of internet radios in your palm? Amazing! As before the signal was carried by microwaves, when the weather was bad, the broadcast might interfere some disruptions. With...

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All the Apple fans are looking forward to the next member of the big cat family of Macintosh – The Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8). Announced on the 16th of February, it is expected in the late summer of 2012. Currently there are only developer previews and releases that are not for the big audience. But only in a month or two the users will have the chance to enjoy a new Notification bar, greater integration with iCloud , innovations in Safari, Twitter integration. There will be one more function that deserves special attention – Gatekeeper, which will be connected with the security matter.   Gatekeeper can’t be defined as a single app or service. It is more like a combination of functions and precautions that forms a unique and innovative approach of providing the users with top levels of security. I am saying unique and innovative because if now there is one main antivirus program that detects and removes the potential threats, in OS X 10.8 there won’t be. Gatekeeper won’t just remove any malware from your computer, it will simply not allow it to enter your system at all. Gatekeeper is based on the principles of three main “components”: The App Store and its app approving techniques; The unique ID that every Apple developer uses to sigh his applications; Sandbox;   The most secure source of applications for Apple’s users undoubtedly is the Mac App Store and iTunes. Every product that is present there is 100% safe and bugless because it has gone through a profound inspection before being released. It is a standard procedure of the App Store. Furthermore every Apple user has his unique Apple ID with which he/she can purchase things from the Apple markets. But if you want not only to buy but to create apps you have to pay an annual developer’s tax. Once being subscribed as a developer you can sign your apps with your ID and after that to upload them in the App Store. Without this distinctive ID you still can develop products for Mac, iPhone and iPad, but they will be rejected from the App Store because are unreliable. And this is not the only advantage of the special ID. The officially authorized markets are not the only place for app distribution. You can upload your creations everywhere but agree that the average user would definitely choose to exploit a signed application than unsigned – it just seems more trustworthy. Of course if it is not from the Apple’s Store there is always a risk. At first what you download might look like a game or a program but in addition to that to be a virus, worm or...

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Nearly 10 years ago, during his speech at the Macworld 2001, Steve Jobs defined the Mac as a “digital hub” for every contemporary person. In the modern high-tech epoch we live in, everything has its digital representation – pictures, movies, songs, projects, even markets. From 2001 to 2011 the computer, in particular the Mac, truly became the centre, the main operating unit in the project called iLife. Consequently the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPad were brought to the world and our life became multi-deviced. Apple’s products are designed not to be able to transfer data between each other and that is why everything had to go through the Mac. It was kind of a repository, a station. If you had a song on your iPod Touch and want it on your iPhone too, first you had to sync the iPod with the Mac and then again to sync the iPhone with the Mac. With so many smart gadgets around, things might get a little bit messy and frankly all this synchronizing can be really nerve-racking. However Apple got a solution and in October 2011 they introduced the iCloud, which brought the digital experience to a totally new level. iCloud arrived as an build-in option in the iOS 5. The deep integration between it and the operating system made everything to happen automatically and there were no substantial functionality changes that would disrupt the average user. Contrary to the first association that springs to your mind when hearing iCloud, it is not a hard drive, levitating in the sky. The word “cloud” was used only metaphorically and comes from the so called cloud computing. The idea is that the content is right there, above you. Just reach out and grab it. But what I actually meant with “a totally new level”? Well if only 7 months ago the Mac was the main unit, “the brain”, with iCloud there are no main units. The Mac, just like the others, is being treated as a device. So the iPhone, the iPod, the iPad, the Mac – they are all equal. The main concept of the “cloud” is: To serve as a virtual data storage that is highly accessible and easily manageable; Automatically to update all the connected devices and to equalize their content; Automatically to feedback all your files that are not from iTunes or from the App Store from every device that is recharging and has Wi-Fi connection; Everybody who has iOS 5 on his device can take advantage of the iCloud. The first 5GB are free and if you need more there is an annual subscription – 10GB additional space is $20, 25GB – $45 and 50GB – $100....

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There is no doubt that QRs are and will continue to be inseparable part of our lives. If you look around right now, I am sure that there will be a QR code nearby. On packages, cartons, tins and bottles, in TV commercials, on posters and in the public transport – they are put everywhere with one main purpose – to interact the user and to promote. In order to be successful QR advertiser, you have to be innovative and constantly to come up with original ideas that would hold the attention of the customers. Below I will show you some interesting examples and a few ideas, supported with a few tips, which would prevent a future failure of your QR campaign.   Take the Korean Emart from Seoul that uses 3D QR code to increase their sales. It is a sculpture that is positioned at a particular place, at a particular angle. It becomes readable only between 12 and 1 pm when the protruding blocks throw specific shadow, which is the black color of the QR. After scanning, the client receives a discount coupon for shopping at the Emart. Eventually, thanks to their unique approach, these guys got 25% sales increase during the “quiet lunch zone”. If you really give it a though you will see that what is more important is the way you interact your target group. Most of the customers appreciate the discount, but what they appreciate more is the way it was gained. When something big like this in Seoul happens, it receives huge media coverage and reaches more and more people. As a result some of them might go only to see it and by the way to buy something cheaply. Of course this 3D QR is not the perfect advertising tool. Its creators obviously have not considered the cases when the weather is cloudy or rainy. Probably that is why the campaign is called “Sunny Sale”. If you to offer your clients an exceptional experience, try something off the beaten track like edible QRs. Such can already be seen in clevercupcakesmontreal.com. On the cupcake a sugar plate is placed with a QR that redirects to the Montreal Science Center website, before eaten of course. The concept is great and definitely attractive but it would be a real challenge for the cook if he had to make different QRs for the different cakes. Another idea that is that good but less effort-consuming would be to place QRs at the bottom of the plates in restaurants. If you go for a lunch and order 4-course meal things would be much faster. When finished with the main dish, instead of waiting for the waiter to...

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  Have you ever tried to send or share a link from Google Images? You probably have and I am pretty sure that you have noticed the extraordinary looooooooooooong URL. This endless consequence of symbols and numbers can be a real eye-sore, especially in the social nets. Often, when posting an image as a comment on Facebook, its URL is bigger than the preview thumbnail of the image. This little inconvenience and a few more, described below, can be easily overcome by using a URL shortener.   Most of you who are Twittering perhaps know what it is all about. Before the birth of Skype, Twitter or Facebook, E-mailing was the most common way of communicating virtually. OK, but some of the mails weren’t very clever. If you had a link in your letter that can’t fit in a single row it just broke and became useless. Almost the same problem could have been experienced with Twitter 2 years ago. There was (and still is) a character limit and when you try to tweet an URL with, let’s say, 300 symbols, everything after the 140th is neglected and what you sent is half link. Of course not all the URLs are so ENORMOUS. Some of them might be 100-150 characters, but still such a string doesn’t leave much room for any additional text or comment. In September 2010 Twitter bought the domain t.co and represented their innate URL shortening service. Now every link, that is published, no matter of its size, goes through that service and is wrapper by http://t.co. Two things are achieved in this way – higher security levels, as long as Twitter checks every URL that is shortened for malware, and statistics about how popular different links are. In order to satisfy their users, Twitter are not showing the shortened version of the ULR but a small part of the actual link. Thus when someone opens his profile he doesn’t read tweets only with mundane and incomprehensible t.co domains like http://t.co./tpF0ObbP. By seeing some meaningful word he is also able to understand what the link is all about.   But let’s leave Twitter and its t.co aside because it and its analytical data can’t be accessed by the average user. If you need a URL shortener to compress a link for a SMS or anything at all there are many options but the most popular and most used ones are goo.gl and bit.ly. What these two “guys” basically do is providing the user with the same result, the same landing page and at the same time saving space, which sometimes can be severely limited. URL shorteners are able to take a string with up to 400...

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Which are better – Native or Web applications? Two years ago the answer to this question was more than clear – natives were the veterans that had proved themselves and webs were still toddling in the fields of app development. January 2011 was the turning point where things changed with the introduction of the new web standard – HTML5. Since then web apps are gaining more and more popularity and their struggle with the native ones is becoming more and more fierce. What are their advantages and disadvantages and is there a winner in this mobile technological dispute? We are only about to see. In What Native Apps are Better? First and maybe the most important factor is the user experience and interaction. There is no second thought that native apps are more complex than the web ones. For the most part they are internet independent. This means that the app is not accessed by the user through a web browser and the device’s capabilities (processor, RAM and video card) can be exploited more profoundly. Lags, due to low internet speed are not present. The result is smoother functionality, crystal clear videos and audios and HD images. The web answer was the so called WebGL thanks to which realistic 3D graphics, which are a must for a contemporary successful game, can be represented in an environment such as the web browser. Sounds great but it is not! With native apps the smartphones loads the core files of the program/game and then runs it while with the web equivalents these core files have first to be downloaded and then loaded. This is bad for your internet connection and the whole procedure can be a real battery drainer. WebGl is truly an amazing web implement but it needs some more time to be optimized. For the moment you can see it in the latest versions of Google Maps, where mountains and other objects are 3D. Moreover some specific gadgets like the camera, the accelometer, the gyroscope and the microphone are used better in native apps. For example you can’t upload photos with the web products of Facebook or Foursquare but with the native variants you can access the camera or the gallery and upload an image. After purchasing Instagram, Facebook has successfully introduced an instant image uploader with the latest update. From native point of view things are pretty good but in web aspect not so much – currently the web app of the social giant takes advantage only of the GPS chip with the option “Check-in”. All in all low functionality is one of the main reasons why when you enter facebook.com or foursquare.com by your smartphone’s web browser you...

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