Tech in the Cloud

Despite iPhone presence, Google Maps still rules on Android

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Thursday 13th December 2012, 4:57pm

It has been a difficult three months for iOS users who had Google Maps stripped from them in favor of Apple's lacking GPS app. The Apple maps app came with a lot of hype, but it proved useful to almost no one -- and even deadly to some. Lesson learne

The nightmare for iOS users has finally come to an end. Google Maps is back on the iPhone. It has been a difficult three months for iOS users who had Google Maps stripped from them in favor of Apple's lacking GPS app. The Apple maps app came with a lot of hype, but it proved useful to almost no one -- and even deadly to some. Lesson learned, iOS users can now download Google Maps to their devices.

Unfortunately, they're still not getting the best mobile maps experience.

For years Android users have enjoyed a much fuller version of Google Maps on their phones. That makes plenty of sense, since Google produces the Android operating system. But they've continually outdone themselves in providing state of the art maps to their customers.

Recommendations

When you use Google Maps for Android, you get more than the basic mapping an navigation features. Looking for something in your area? You can pull up restaurants, cafes, bars, and attractions right from the app. It contains the Google Places reviews as well, so you can see what others think of these locations. Through the app you can also leave your own review -- and reviews are only worthwhile when many people write them.

In addition, you can look for local offers and check into various locations. You can star them and save them to My Places, so that you can go back to the places you've already enjoyed. The app even provides location history, so you can backtrack whenever you need.

Layers

In addition to the basic roadmap, Google Maps for Android lets you view many different layers. Looking for the average traffic levels at a certain time of day? Google will not only show you where traffic is heavy and where it is light, but it will update the estimated travel time.

Looking for public transportation lines? How about the terrain? Maybe you want to find a bicycle trail. The Google Maps for Android lets you add each to the map with just a single click.

Navigation

While there is a navigation feature in the iOS Google Maps app, it pales in comparison to Google Navigation, the revolutionary system that the Google Maps for Android app uses. It makes a separate GPS unit completely unnecessary, as it functions just as well as a TomTom or Garmin unit. It even lets you choose whether you want the fastest time route, or the shortest distance. And it guides you along with precision you won't find in other smartphone GPS apps.

Last spring a few friends and I took a trip to an unfamiliar place. We split up into two cars. In my car we used the Google Navigation app on Android, while the other car used the Google Maps for iPhone. Not only did we get there faster than them consistently, but they also ended up getting lost a few times along the way. There simply is no substitution for Google Navigation. It is the best in the biz.

Usable on any number of phones

Android is open. Android is abundant. The iPhone is a closed, limited system. Google Maps for Android is available on literally any Android handset, from the king of the crop, the Samsung Galaxy SIII, to a two-year-old T-Mobile LG cell phone. That means even people who don't need the latest technology can take advantage of Android's superior mapping application. Users with iOS not only get an inferior experience, but are quite limited when choosing.

Yes, it is good news for iOS users everywhere that Google Maps has returned to the iPhone. But it has always been around on Android, and it has always been superior. It's interesting, then, that iPhone users are celebrating the return of an app that pales in comparison to its Android counterpart.

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How To Find a Deal on a Smartphone

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Tuesday 4th December 2012, 9:04pm

When it comes to the gadget lover, it might seem as though deals are nonexistent. The best phones and tablets on the market cost hundreds of dollars, with nary a sale in sight. What's a bargain shopper to do?

For many consumers, the holiday season is all about finding deals on the perfect gifts for loved ones. Yet when it comes to the gadget lover, it might seem as though deals are nonexistent. The best phones and tablets on the market cost hundreds of dollars, with nary a sale in sight. What's a bargain shopper to do?

The answer is to look away from the shiny new iPhone. Yes, the iPhone is the most popular smarpthone on the market. It is also expensive, and there is no flexibility in the price. It's what Apple sets it at, and there is no discount. Savvy shoppers, however, can find many deals on phones comparable to the iPhone.

Look for older models

It might seem tacky to gift someone an outdated gadget. But these days, it's more and more difficult to tell what is outdated. Phones are getting better and more powerful, yes, but we're seeing incremental upgrades. That is to say, the phones released in 2011 are nearly as functional as the phones released in 2012. But, of course, they're a whole lot cheaper.

Models like the Samsung Galaxy S II might be a year or more old, but they can really pack a punch. The specs aren't that much worse than the Galaxy S III. In addition, many smartphone users perfer the 4.3-inch screen of the S II to the 4.8-inch screen of the S III. With a little tech savvy a user can modify the S II and bring it nearly up to speed with its successor.

Shop for off-brand models

If you want to purchase a new Samsung phone, or a new Apple phone, you're going to pay a premium. Not only is it a new, shiny device, but it comes with a reputable and authoritative brand stamped on it. That brand stamp inflates the price itself. That is to say, if you have two identical phones and one says Samsung while the other boasts a competitor brand, the Samsung model will almost certainly cost more.

Brands such as HTC and LG have solid reputations that aren't as well known to the average consumer. But savvy consumers can take advantage of this perception issue and score quality smartphones for non-premium prices. After all, why would you pay for a stamp when you can get a different stamp on the same product for a better price?

Consider the carrier

Smartphones have value by themselves, but they are largely tied to a network. When you buy a smartphone from Verizon, you're basically dealing with Verizon from Point A to Point Z, even though it does involve Brand X. And while Verizon might have a large and fast data network, there are many drawbacks -- price being the foremost. Smaller carriers can offer better deals.

Take a look, for instance, at the list of T-Mobile best smartphones. There are many high-quality models in there (notice that most of them are off-brand) that are available for free on contract, and at a reasonable cost without a contract. Those deals simply aren't available with the larger cell phone carriers. Working with T-Mobile, then, can save savvy consumers money.

Shopping for a smartphone deal might seem impossible. The best phones are very expensive, and service is even more expensive. But by looking at older models and off-brand models, while considering the carrier, consumers can find the bargains that they seek.

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How To Turn Your Blog's Visitors into Paying Customers

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Wednesday 31st October 2012, 1:31pm

"If you are not paying for it, you are not the customer. You are the product."

Who are your blog's customers? If you answered your readers, you are unfortunately mistaken. It's easy to think of readers as our customers. After all, they're the ones consuming the content. We create it, they consume it. It sure sounds like a customer relationship. Yet it is anything but. There's an old saying that applies directly to the relationship between bloggers and their readers.

"If you are not paying for it, you are not the customer. You are the product."

On his blog The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufmann goes over 10 ways to make money. In it he describes the blogger-reader relationship as "audience aggregation."

create and distribute information that appeals to a specific set of people, then sell access to that audience (advertising, direct mail, etc.) to an interested third-party.

So unless your blog requires a paid subscription, your customers are not your readers. Your customers are your advertisers, whether they be placing text or display ads. Even affiliate links represent a form of audience aggregation. You're not selling something to your audience directly. Instead you're selling your audience to advertisers and affiliate programs.

This kind of relationship can work for some bloggers, but it can prove problematic for a number of reasons.

• You need a large base audience in order to attract high level advertising deals.
• Your advertisers' and your readers' interests might not align.
• Your niche might not be attractive to advertisers.
• Inversely, high levels of competition in your niche can tip the supply and demand scales towards the advertiser and away from you.
• Your readers might not respond well to affiliate links and marketing tactics.

And that's just the start of it. The more parties you involve in a transaction, the greater chance there is that something goes wrong. The solution is to directly involve yourself in the sales process. This is by no means easy, but it can provide a solution to your money making problems if you apply the lessons correctly.

For bloggers there are two primary ways to involve yourself directly in the sales process: through reselling products and through selling your own products.

Reselling products

Reselling products is not the same as affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing you are just doing the marketing work. That is, you are helping push people to buy products from another company. In return you get a commission from the sale. Reselling products is a more direct process. Not only are you marketing to your customers, but you are selling the products to them as well.

First you'll need products to sell. There are two ways to accomplish this:

1. Agency. You can become an agent for a particular brand. This is common in the cell phone industry. Large carriers allow outside businesses to operate as agents, selling their products and services for a commission. This is a bit more difficult to achieve with a blog, but it's still possible.

2. Wholesaling. Sites such as Worldwide Brands offer directories certified wholesalers. You can choose products from these wholesalers and resell the products, using your blog as a sales engine. For most bloggers this is the most efficient means of doing business.

Thankfully, most wholesalers offer drop shipping. That is, when you file orders with them they'll take care of the shipping and handling. That will cut into your commission, but it will also save you a hassle that you probably can't handle anyway. You'll also need a merchant account with an online payment processor such as Intuit, so that you can accept various forms of payment from your customers. Both of those will eat at your revenue, but you can still make worthwhile money reselling products from wholesalers.

Your own products

The most effective way to profits is to create your own products to sell. No, this does not mean manufacturing widgets in your basement. The most common products for bloggers to sell are information products. You can create any number of information products, including ebooks, videos, and podcasts. Instead of taking a cut of each sale, you get to keep all of it, minus transaction fees.

We all have unique sets of knowledge, and we can use that knowledge to teach others. By turning this knowledge into ebooks, e-learning videos, and other information products, bloggers can profit directly from their efforts. Instead of selling an audience to an advertiser, they're selling products directly to the audience. Done correctly it can lead to great profits.

There is one main upside and one main downside to selling information products.

Upside: Scalability. When you create an information product once, you can duplicate it and sell it an infinite number of times. That is, you put in the effort once, and then reap the rewards in perpetuity. As long as you keep marketing the product and it remains relevant, you can continue profiting from it.

Downside: Uniqueness of offer. You already have a blog, and chances are you use your blog to teach people. There are also likely many blogs like yours that also teach people. That means you have to make your information product stand out in some way. You have to provide information that users can't find elsewhere, or else is presented in a novel manner. Even with considerable effort, it can provide difficult to sell the product if the prospects aren't convinced of its value.

With great effort comes great reward. While you must work harder to create and then sell your own products, you also keep almost all of the revenue. You'll need a merchant account, similar to wholesale reselling, but that transaction fee is the only expense you'll incur with each sale. The rest of the money gets deposited right in your bank account.

For modern bloggers, making money can be a difficult proposition. The old way of doing things, selling an audience to an advertiser, doesn't quite pay the bills unless you have a massive audience. The alternatives will bring in much more income. The closer you get to the sale, the more money you'll make. Reselling products and creating your own products for sale will reap the highest margins. They take considerable effort, but the payoff is far greater than mere audience aggregation.

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Where technology meets blogging head-on

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Thursday 25th October 2012, 10:49pm

Bloggers are technology enthusiasts by definition. They've already embraced web technology by the mere act of starting a blog.

If you spend enough time browsing the web, you'll come across a high volume of blogs that combine two topics: technology and blogging. The blog will contain many posts about SEO and social media, but will also have information about new smartphones and other gadgets. The two topics might appear to be different, but they're really interconnected.

Bloggers are technology enthusiasts by definition. They've already embraced web technology by the mere act of starting a blog. They need to use photo editors to get images on their blogs, FTP engines to upload files, and communication technology to converse with readers and other bloggers. They also likely use physical technology to a greater degree than the average person. It makes sense, then, that many blogs about blogging are also about technology. The two work together perfectly.

Need some examples? Here are some of the world's greatest gadgets and how bloggers use them constantly.

Laptop computers

It all starts with the laptop. Take a survey of bloggers around the web, and you'll find that the great majority of them write on their laptops. Why? Because they're portable. Blogging doesn't require much computing power. You just need a simple word processor, an image editor, and an internet browser. Any old laptop can run those. Yet bloggers often take this to another level.

Go to your local coffee shop and see what kind of computers bloggers are using. They're typically the newest and the best. Many of them will be using the latest Apple computers, like the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. Others will opt for something even smaller and sleeker, like the Ultrabooks that are currently in high fashion. Whatever the case, bloggers are seemingly in love with their laptops.

Smartphones

Yes, it seems that everyone has a smartphone these days. Some people have stuck with their regular boring phones, but not bloggers. Do you know a blogger who doesn't have a smartphone? I don't. And for good reason: a smartphone is a tool crucial for teaching bloggers how to understand their audiences.

Traffic from mobile devices is growing. On one of my blogs we've seen a 150 percent increase in mobile traffic in the last year, and a 400 percent increase from 2010. One third of our traffic now comes from mobile devices. We have to cater to this crowd by ensuring a quality mobile experience. This means checking the site on our smartphones constantly. If something isn't right readers will leave and possibly never return.

Bloggers also need smartphones to work with their applications. If your blog doesn't have an app, you're missing an opportunity to more fully capture readers' attentions. Of course, you need a high quality app to do do. Engaging with your own app will give you clues as to what works and what does not.

Tablets

Mobile traffic doesn't come only from smartphones. Counted in those numbers are tablet computers. While tablets oftentimes look more like laptops than smartphones, they still represent a special portion of the market, one that bloggers cannot ignore. After a long day on the job, many readers kick back with tablets at night and read blogs. If your blog doesn't work on a tablet, you might lose this audience.

Bloggers should become attuned with tablets, even if they don't own one. Yes, in many ways tablets are luxury items, but since so many people use them they're pretty much work devices for bloggers. As with smartphones, there's the issue of how the site renders on a tablet, and how an app works. There's also the idea of how users interact with items on their tablets. Do they subscribe using RSS apps? Do they bookmark and visit in the browser? Finding out these dynamics is crucial for bloggers' future success.

At a glance, the combination of blogging and technology might seem an arbitrary one. Yet there are so many connections between the two. Bloggers need technology, because their readers use technology. Without the connection, bloggers are left in the dark. So the next time you see a site that combines the two topics, embrace it. You'll learn plenty about both, including how the two work together.

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Worthwhile Expenses for At-Home Workers

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Monday 22nd October 2012, 9:19pm

Working at home brings different challenges than working in an office. The space is yours, both personally and professionally. That means you have to invest in your office environment.

Telecommuters have a big advantage over their office working counterparts: they don't incur nearly as many transportation expenses. They save time by not commuting to work in the morning, and money by not paying for gas or transit fare. While those savings might seem like money in the bank, they're not. They're just funds that need redirecting.

Working at home brings different challenges than working in an office. The space is yours, both personally and professionally. That means you have to invest in your office environment. After working at home for nearly six years, I've found what environmental aspects work, and which are frivolous. The following is a list of expenses that are worth the cost.

Comfortable workstation

In an office environment nearly everything is supplied to you, from your computer to the chair you sit in all day. At home, though, you have to choose such furniture and gadgets. This can eat into the savings you realize from transportation, but it also presents an opportunity. You can create the perfect work environment, tailored to your own tastes and style.

What makes a comfortable workstation? It's really what you make of it, but it includes personal choices on the following elements.

Desk. You might not want a gargantuan, CEO-style desk, but you'll need something with enough room for you to spread out. I've found that drafting tables can provide more than enough space for two monitors, a keyboard, a pad of paper, a paper inbox, and various other accoutrements. Plus, it allows you to stand up and sit down as you please. Your desk will depend on your situation, so don't take the decision lightly.

Chair. While standing at your desk is preferable for health reasons, most of us will mostly sit. That makes the choice of chair all the more important. After all, you don't want to sit in something that makes you uncomfortable. Good chairs will cost considerably more than mediocre ones, but it is easily worth the investment. Getting something with adjustable height, a solid back, and a well-cushioned seat will make your home office life much more bearable.

Computer. It doesn't matter much whether you're a PC or a Mac user. Either way you're going to need a powerful machine, whether desktop or laptop. Perhaps the most important aspect of a computer setup is the monitor. Purchasing a second monitor can be a great investment in your productivity. Just as a large desk allows you to spread out physically, dual monitors allow you to spread out digitally. It lets you keep more things open at once, which means fewer tasks slipping through the cracks.

Organizational containers

A messy office can be disastrous. The old saying "empty desk, empty mind" might have a ring of truth to it, but the inverse is also true: "cluttered desk, cluttered mind." At least a modicum of organization is necessary for any office, no less a home office. It doesn't really take much, either.

Desk drawers aren't ideal for organization. There are just too many opportunities to shove random items in there and destroy the organizational system. A set of stacking drawers works well. Combined with ample shelving, they can hold any number of office items, such as pens, paper, folders, tape, staplers, etc.

One final organizational container that proves invaluable for a home office: a filing system. It doesn't have to be a big, heavy, expensive filing cabinet. In fact, unless you keep copious physical records, such as insurance policies, something simpler will work much better. A filing grate with hanging folders can suffice. Label the folders A through Z and file items as you'll remember them.

Common appliances

While a disorganized office can be distracting, there are far worse distraction opportunities when working in a home office. Getting up and leaving the room alone can distract you. The more time you spend out of the office, the tougher it is to go back in and pick up where you left off. It might be to your benefit to keep certain common appliances right in your office, for ease of use.

A coffee maker is the first that comes to mind. If you're more of a tea drinker, an electric kettle can come in handy. Both are easy to store in the office and let you avoid multiple trips out of the office and into the kitchen. At the end of the day you can take them out and clean them, prepping them for another day in the office.

An uncommon appliance I've found useful: reverse osmosis water filter. If you have hard water, they're essential. Otherwise you'll see buildup in your kettle and coffee maker, which you'll need time to clean. Reverse osmosis water filters also make for better tasting water, and in the long-term they're cheaper than buying bottled water. If you're stuck using your home water all day, this is a worthwhile investment.

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