Whether you are publishing content or selling products, you need to make it as easy as possible for your customers to get to your goods on their terms. Mobile usage is growing exponentially and will be an increasingly essential part of your toolkit to keep your customers coming back for more.

But if you’re just starting to think about how to go mobile, it can be hard to know where to begin. Two of the key things you’ll need to research are what mobile devices your customers are using now and what they want to use in the future. This information will help you make the right decisions when planning how to allocate your valuable resources.

Review your analytics. You should have Web analytics running on your website. Google Analytics is a top-notch free tool that will tell you a lot about how people are accessing your content. While analytics are useful, they don’t tell you the whole story. You also want to know how people ideally would view your content, which isn’t completely revealed until you’ve created an optimized mobile experience.

Send a survey. The best way to find out what your customers want is to ask. There are numerous survey tools available, which you can use to send a Web-based survey to your email list. Regardless of how you deploy the survey, it’s important to keep it short to increase the number of responses. Here is a suggested set of questions to find out your customers’ mobile preferences:

1) What type(s) of mobile phone do you have?
        a) iPhone
        b) Android
        c) Blackberry
        d) Windows
        e) Palm
        f) Other

2) What type(s) of mobile phone do you expect to have 1 year from now?
        a) iPhone
        b) Android
        c) Blackberry
        d) Windows
        e) Palm
        f) Other

3) From where do you typically view our website?
        a) Work
        b) Home
        c) On the go

4) From what type of device would you prefer to view our website?
        a) Desktop computer
        b) Laptop
        c) Tablet
        d) Mobile Phone

5) On a mobile phone, how do you prefer to read content?
        a) Apps
        b) Mobile Web browser (e.g., Safari)
        c) RSS Reader

6) If you own a tablet, what kind?
        a) iPad
        b) Android
        c) Windows
        d) Blackberry
        e) I don’t own a tablet

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, How To, Marketing, Mobile, Technology

I spent the weekend with my new iPhone 4S, having gotten it delivered on Friday.  It is indeed pretty cool, but unlike Siri I won’t just direct you to Apple’s website to read about it.  I first had to endure months of waiting, after first expecting it to come in June as the last few iPhone models had in years past.  I couldn’t help but be tantalized by the rumors of a magical iPhone 5 with a thin, teardrop form factor, full-face screen, and myriad other features that, in the end, proved to be COMPLETELY MADE UP!  It’s amazing to me that people actually went to the trouble to build mockups of these imaginary iPhone 5.  And in the end, we got the 4S, as I originally expected, and was looking forward to anyway.

As an improvement on the iPhone 4, it made sense to me to upgrade to it from my 3GS, as I upgraded to that from my 1st generation iPhone.  I’m a sort of 5 minutes early adopter (except for that 1st gen. iPhone, which was a hand-me-down).  I’d rather let others experience the problems with a brand new technology, then get it on the first revision.  In the case of the iPhone 4, there was at least one clear and significant problem: that of the antenna.  Which I can’t say I’ve done any intense first-hand testing for, but my experience so far is positive.  And I’ll take the Apple literature and other reviews’ word that the “death grip” problem is done away with, and that the smart antenna switching technology actually does improve internet bandwidth over the same 3G network.

So what have I experienced so far that I can specifically highlight as points of awesomeness in the 4S?

• Battery life – I left my house at 1PM on Saturday with a full charge, and used it sporadically over the following 13 hours, included a little voice use, some texting, email and Facebook, and a little Pandora at the end of the night.  It only got down to 20% battery at about 4PM on Sunday, when I finally plugged it in again.  WAY better than how my 3GS currently fares.  I’m curious how much this current performance on the 4S will degrade over time.
• Camera – So I haven’t totally put it through its paces yet, but I’m very pleased so far.  Partly due to the responsiveness when starting the camera app, and between shots.  That’s mostly due to the increased processor speed, which I’ll touch on in concert with the screen.  The video quality very very good.  For some reason playback in Quicktime on my Mac looks a little jerky, but I’m thinking that might be an independent issue.  I’ve got one example of a really nice looking photo here.  Low-light quality I’m not yet very impressed with, but there are more settings I have yet to explore.
• Siri – A lot of the buzz of course is about Siri, the built-in voice recognition software that can contextually parse your questions and commands, and really does just work remarkably well at understanding what you’re saying.  The old voice command feature on the iPhone was almost useless in terms of interpreting your voice, so it was refreshing to see this actually come together.  You can also have some fun with it, as evidenced by my screenshot above, and the ones others posted here.  What’s great about it to me, is that I can use it to dictate emails and text messages while I’m driving.
• Screen/Processor – Having come from a 3GS, I’m just wowed by the image quality on the screen.  This is nothing new to iPhone 4 users, but it’s still amazing to me.  However, that combined with the increased processor speed (up to 73% higher than the 4, by some evidence) means that apps can now render even more stunning graphics.  I found a game that purported to have new version with graphics only supported by the new 4S (Real Racing 2), and it does indeed look really really cool.  Fun game too.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: Gadget, Technology

I owe a lot to Steve Jobs. My family got an Apple IIc computer when I was in the 1st grade (thanks Mom and Dad!) and it defined my entire career. I was an early card-carrying member of the cult of Apple. It wasn’t just about being cool or different. There are hundreds of tangible reasons why that platform was and is superior. Not just for artists, but for everyone. An evangelist was born.

In the 2nd grade, my 1st grade teacher came to get me out of class to help her “fix” her Apple IIe. Remember those guys with the green and black monitors? Turns out she just didn’t have the monitor on, but I found it remarkable that she came to me rather than any other adult in the school.

That was my first consulting gig.

I often don’t write about “big news” since I figure everyone is doing it and the world probably doesn’t need one more blog post. But in this case, this isn’t just news. This is the end of an era.

But it’s not all sadness. Steve’s legacy is so strong, inspiring, and lasting that his untimely passing also marks the beginning of a new era — for Apple and all technology companies and geeks.

We’ve seen social media take hold in the past few years, and I believe we have yet to realize the true potential of that technology. In its infant state of exploration, experimentation and fundamental learning, social media remain anyone’s game.

Apple fueled the growth of new technologies such as social media by exploding the potential of open mobile app distribution. I clamor to ideas like this — philosophies, frameworks, and factories working together to empower everyone and level the playing field.

At the center of all this was Steve, whose singular vision and demanding standards merged artistry and technology into some of the most empowering devices and software ever created.

Being a life-long Apple fanatic means I’ve been there in good times and bad. I saw Steve get booted from Apple, and then triumphantly return to save the company from disappearing altogether. I painfully tried to help my college buddies with their late-90’s Mac’s that just weren’t very well-built.

When the Mac came about in 1984, I became mesmerized by desktop publishing and later PageMaker. The Mac made that world possible at the time, and once again I found it easy to dazzle people by doing what I enjoyed most – using the things that came out of Steve’s mind to solve problems and create.

This lead me to pursue journalism through high school and college. I was also an Apple Student Rep at Northwestern, which is the only time I received a paycheck from Apple. While I didn’t specifically pursue journalism as a career, my life has led me along the path of the new journalism in the form of social media and communication technologies. I apply these lessons on behalf of my company and clients every day.

And yes, I still use a Mac. Now I have several. I feel like much of the world has come to understand what I’ve known all my life. Vision like this is rare and deserves to be revered.

Steve would be the first to tell you that his path was not without mistakes. Whose life isn’t? But his journey is an extraordinary one worthy of reflection. He had a unique way of bringing teams of varied talent together to create something profound around a singular vision. It’s no surprise that Pixar is one of most successful film studios and business success stories in any industry.

Five years ago, who would have thought that thousands of executives would be walking around with an Apple logo on their phones?

If you’ve never seen it, take a few minutes to watch Steve Jobs’ address to Stanford graduates in 2005. These words continue to inspire me.

Thanks Steve for all you’ve given me and the world. We’ll never forget what you did and we’ll do our very best to carry your torch of innovation.

Update:
I was going through some old Apple memorabilia (yes, I have a lot of it), and found this photo of the rock we painted at Northwestern University in April 1997 before they changed to a single color logo. We made the student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, the next day. However, the article was titled “Macintosh Misery” due to our decision to create hopeful art during a dark chapter in Apple’s life. Steve’s return and recovery of the company shortly thereafter thankfully make these mere anecdotes of history.

This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Gadget, Technology

In April of last year Steve Jobs published an open-letter on Apple’s website explaining why Adobe’s Flash technology cannot run (by design) on Apple’s iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone.)

Flash has become an inseparable part of the Web as experienced on desktop computers, achieving almost complete saturation (99% by Adobe’s own accounts) and, until recently, it’s been the most frequently utilized technology for playing back video and producing animated content including ad-banners and web-based games.  The reasons that Jobs gave for excluding Flash boil down to the fact that Apple keeps a famously tight-control of the user experience on their products and Flash takes that control out of their hands.  Flash is: 100% proprietary, a band-width/battery/system resource hog and notoriously insecure.  Jobs also points out that Flash is simply not as essential as it once was given that most video on the web is available now in open-source and HTML5 compatible formats like H.264.

Last week Adobe proved that they still capable of adapting with the release of Flash Media Server (FMS) 4.5.  FMS has traditionally been used to stream video to Flash-based media players but as of version 4.5 the Media Server is now also able to target protocols compatible with Apple.

This just covers video, interactive content still isn’t supported, but it’s a step forward.

Exit question: How much does Flash still matter these days?  Does any part of your web-presence still rely on it?

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Tom Hickey Categories: Gadget, Technology

You might have heard about Google’s announcement to purchase Motorola Mobility Holdings for $12.5 billion. On the surface this would seem to be a move to solidify the Android ecosystem and cult by starting to build and distribute their own mobile hardware (cell phones and tablets).

That’s part of it. Apple has demonstrated the market power and profitability that a proper cult following can generate and continues to demonstrate this commitment by practically giving away their newest operating system, Lion ($29), and actually giving away their upcoming iCloud service to all Lion users. Not a bad way to get people to buy the latest and greatest.

Not too far beneath Google’s surface brews a tempest that has significant implications for all mobile technology innovation in the years to come. Google’s main interest in Motorola is 17,000-plus patents that allow them to enter the patent wars currently underway. In this war, patents are conglomerated legal cards to be played as part of an ongoing legal strategy for each company vying for market share.

Patents were designed to fuel innovation by rewarding someone’s original idea, allowing him or her a specific period of time to capitalize monetarily on that idea. Technology moves much faster than the law, and we’re quickly seeing the limitations of copyright, trademark, and patent law as they currently stand.

On the heels of reports saying Android phones occupy nearly half the market, one might wonder how such a deal could get through anti-trust court. To Google’s credit, this does represent a new business sector for them as they wisely licensed the Android OS (classic Microsoft strategy) rather than building hardware (Apple). Now how do you think those dozens of hardware manufactures feel about competing directly with a company owned by their licensor?

While Larry Page states that the deal will “enhance competition and offer consumers accelerating innovation, greater choice, and wonderful user experiences,” I’m not convinced. The little guy doesn’t have the legal muscle to enter the patent wars, and is often only brought in unknowingly after he’s had some success.

Certainly Google has offered much innovation to the world, and some see as a defensive move. I have a limited amount of trust for any large corporation, and these days that includes Google and even Apple. If you’ve been watching this game awhile, it may seem somewhat ironic to see Apple and Microsoft banding together to sue Google. The enemy of my enemy and all that.

This situation makes me squirm the way much of our stock market does. What was created as an institution to allow anyone to invest in a company, hitching his or her star to the success and failure of that company, has become an abstraction that allows people to place bets on the success or failure of anything or nothing. We’ve seen how well that played out in recent years.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Gadget, Technology

We’re big fans of the Specialized Information Publishing Association (SIPA), an organization focused on the ever-changing needs of niche publishers, typically in the B2B space. As members and speakers, we’ve enjoyed getting to know the diverse groups involved, and I often learn as much as I teach at their seminars, since publishers are in the middle of a bone fide revolution.

Tom Lynch and I attended the national conference in Washington D.C. this month, and added “exhibitor” to our list of credentials. Astek’s growth has always been fueled by word of mouth from our happy customers (thanks!), but we felt it was important for us to add another layer of support for SIPA, as well as to get some extra exposure for Astek by having a booth that stood out and quickly became known as “Astek Lounge.”

I’m thrilled with how well our booth turned out, thanks largely to Vin at Vin Design, who is an expert in experiential design.

First things first. Tom and I headed over to IKEA to pick up some essentials. We were creating something very different from the blue table we were provided — a space that would invite people to come in and stay awhile. And it worked!

While we were giving away real apples (on the right), we decided to have a contest and give away another Apple in the form of a new iPad 2. People entered by scanning our QR code (on the left) to register for our ePiphany newsletter. This gave us an opportunity personally to help several SIPA members get their QR code readers installed and working on their smart phones, which proved most painful on Blackberries.

Check out Astek iPad winner Brad Forrister, of M. Lee Smith Publishers/Business & Legal Resources, basking in his new toy (green cover of course):

We had fun experimenting with colorizing QR codes, and used them on the table tents strewn throughout the lounge to make it easy to learn more about Webany CMS, ePiphany, and the people at Astek:

I gave a talk on mobile publishing to a standing room-only crowd. Every couple of years publishers are thrown for a new loop in technology: SEO, CMS, social media, and now mobile. We’re helping many publishers figure out how to go mobile, which is the fastest growing content consumption market.

SIPA is a very progressively-minded organization, and hired Astek to run Twitter for the whole conference. Rachel was putting in 12-hour days back in Chicago, but it was a raging success. Several members participated, both those at the show and ones who could not make it. We had two Twitter walls (one shown below with Kati and Anne), and hashtags for the conference and each seminar to facilitate macro and micro topical real-time conversations.

I tweeted the awards ceremony in real-time and Rachel picked up the broadcast to retweet through @sipaonline. It was a blast and really demonstrated the power of Twitter to the attendees. We’re racing with it, offering this service to all kinds of conference organizers. Twitter has come a long way since I first wrote about it in 2008, and the conference aspect has become the clearest way for me to explain its true potential to people.

We had a tiny bit of downtime in the booth, which Tom used to show me how to juggle apples:

At the end, we donated the IKEA furniture to the local Boys & Girls Club of America, who were as thrilled to get it as we were not to ship it home. Now that’s a win-win.

See you in Miami!

This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Fun, How To, Marketing, Technology

It’s funny, I started writing this a week ago when this was just a rumor, but now that’s it’s official I can use facts.

On Tuesday, Apple announced a variety of things around the corner. The most notable is iCloud, which is a set of fully integrated apps that tie all your Apple devices together. This replaces the MobileMe service and makes it free, which is a welcome change as I was never thrilled with the performance of that service versus the promise.

Check out Gizmodo’s great 8-minute version of the keynote if you don’t want to spend two hours of your life watching the whole thing.

The word “cloud” has been tossed around a lot in the past couple of years. If you’re not sure exactly what that means, here’s how I see it:

Technically, a cloud is a bunch of computers linked together to distribute the workload they’re given. Much in the same way that a single computer may have two or more processors to distribute the task load, you can think of a cloud as any number of computers working in harmony to get the job done.

Philosophically, a cloud allows you to store any amount of data or serve any number of applications. Most importantly, it allows you to access data and applications from any device or location. Anytime, anywhere, anyhow. The goal is true ubiquity of personal data for you.

Competition exists with companies wanting you to use their cloud versus the cloud next door. Ideally, all devices would work with all clouds and we’d all just be able to access our information from any terminal, regardless or brand or creed.

Apple is making a significant play here to unify their tight ecosystem of devices and software. They are in the best position to do this, as they have the most control over their ecosystem, delivering software, hardware, and networks that tie together.

Similar things exist on Android and other platforms, but like many things in the “Wild Wild West,” they may offer more or different capabilities but they’ll likely take more tinkering to get going. Apple tends to “just work.”

I recently presented at the SIPA 2011 Publishing Conference in D.C. on mobile (about 4 hours after this announcement) and one of the hot topics on people’s mind was the huge gap between how great the iPad is and how limited it seems to be when it comes to full-on productivity.

The iPad is here to stay through 2015 at least, as the following chart clearly indicates. Android tablet growth will be much slower than the phones since Google’s decided to license its Honeycomb tablet OS. This will be good for quality and consistency of apps, but creates a barrier for developers that will slow growth.

While Microsoft is late to this game (again), their advantage is the embedded standardization of MS Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). Getting these staple apps fully useable on the iPad and other tablets is essential for sales teams and other professionals, giving Microsoft a shot at this volatile market.

I’ve heard creative approaches such as running MS apps on a server and using the iPad as a thin client or dumb terminal. In this usage, the iPad is just used as a remote screen for a computer somewhere in the cloud. This grants full software capability, but the dependence on a constant Internet connection is a deal breaker for some.

This led me to Documents to Go, which is a native iPhone/iPad app that allows me to edit MS Office files directly on the device. I’m still getting used to it, and formatting retention isn’t 100%, but it seems to solve the issue of office productivity for many issues. Perhaps some day apps like this will exist in the cloud, but no matter how good the server infrastructure is, full adoption will always depend on local bandwidth for the user, which is far from perfect.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Technology

The Astek team is pleased as punch about our latest iPhone app, a flashlight that takes advantage of the new LED camera light in the iPhone 4.

But Light Beam is much more than just a flashlight! It’s the app that could save your party AND your life!

Light Beam is the iPhone 4’s brightest and easiest flashlight using the built-in LED flash! It includes a strobe light and SOS emergency beacon.

Features:

• Uses iPhone 4 built-in LED for brightest light possible.
• Intuitive, elegant design.
• Flashlight: Auto-on when app is opened for quickest access.
• Strobe Light: Bring the party with this ultra-bright strobe light. Or increase visibility for extra safety on your bike at night. Easy-touch slider allows you to control the speed.
• Emergency SOS Signal: Activate with the tap of a button. Beams a repeating SOS Morse code signal via the LED light.

Download Light Beam for iPhone 4 now!

Here’s a screenshot of Light Beam:

Check it out and if you don’t have an iPhone 4 please tell your friends!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Gadget, Technology

There was a lot of buzz this morning about when exactly iPhone users could get the iOS 4 update via iTunes since Apple gave no time for the release today.  It seems like it was made available at 10 AM PST.  And yeah, I know that because I was checking with some frequency.  I have a 3GS version of the iPhone, which is the last hardware version they made, before the iPhone 4 which is just being delivered this week to the early adopters.

3GS owners get most of the benefit of the new system update, with the exception of the Face Time videoconferencing feature which uses the new phone’s secondary camera.  The new iMovie app will also only be available for the new hardware apparently due to intensive processor requirements. 3G users get everything else except multi-tasking, and strangely, no wallpaper configuration either.  And 1st generation iPhone users are totally out of luck here.

In any case, I’ll say that my favorite thing about the new OS so far is the All Inboxes feature, which combines my work and personal email in one place.  So I no longer have to poke poke poke between them.  It also collates your email by thread, which is something I’m used to as a gmail user and appreciate.  Folders for organizing my apps is also nice, and I like the ability to now easily set the background for my home and lock screens.

The multi-tasking functionality seems pretty cool too.  I’ve played around with the interface for browsing and switching among concurrent apps.  It’s a pretty slick UI, no surprise.  I’m looking forward to the ability to listen to audio outside of the native iPod app while browsing email, the web, etc.

Here’s a couple good rundowns with more information about what iOS 4 is all about:

• A higher-level list of 6 highlights.  #1 is very important – update your apps in the app store to get the full benefit of multi-tasking!
• An in-depth walkthrough of almost everything that’s new in this version.  Very readable though.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: Fun, Gadget, Technology

Apple had one of their big press conferences today, the centerpiece of which was the reveal for the new iPhone operating system (OS 4).  It has many small updates, and several larger ones.  The thing that most people are talking about is the introduction of application multitasking.  Previously, when you switch from a third party application to any other application on the iPhone, the original app in effect goes to sleep.  This is annoying for things like streaming audio, when you want to continue listening to a stream while you look something up on the web or send a text message.  Apple is now making it possible for streaming audio to continue in such a situation, as well as allowing background applications to do a few other specific things like send notifications to the foreground of the phone.  It’s not quite true multitasking, but it’s probably enough to make most people happy.  People that have the latest 3GS hardware that is.  Those with earlier hardware versions are out of luck.

The other big update, as I see it, is the new set of “Enterprise Features”.  These are things like VPN, Microsoft Exchange, and the ability to internally push applications to employee phones.  This is a direct shot a Blackberry, which still holds a large share of the corporate market.  I think a lot of companies are getting pressured by their employees to let them have iPhones as company phones.  And these features may well make that a more viable option.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: Gadget