Software : Salesforce.com launches Service Cloud Mobile

Salesforce.com launches Service Cloud Mobile
IE 10 finally comes to Windows 7
Apple to cool hot water over kids' app bills with iTunes credit
Anger as Facebook bans Instagram-like Vintage Camera app
Shazam celebrates 300 million users with new tablet apps
MWC 2013: Windows Phone: Will 130,000 apps be enough to spark Nokia revival?
Nokia's maps and navigation apps spread to more Windows Phones

Salesforce.com launches Service Cloud Mobile

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Salesforce.com has pushed out its first service for mobile agent interface, co-browsing, communities and chat.

Named Service Cloud Mobile, it is the first in a series of mobile services expected from the company.

It takes Salesforce Sales Cloud to mobile devices and, through the Salesforce Touch Platform, enables developers to write custom mobile apps and deploy them to any device.

Salesforce.com says this addresses the fact that most legacy call centre systems have been designed for landlines.

The company has highlighted the co-browsing technology, which is scheduled to be widely available in the second half of the year and will enable sales agents to guide customers on mobile devices via any web browsers. This makes it possible to set up accounts, complete forms and work through any issues without downloading any software.

The Mobile Service Cloud communities are now live and can provide access to knowledge and expertise, so companies can help customers to find answers to questions through self-service, peers or experts.

Service Cloud Touch, which was released last year, is optimised for mobile devices and enables service agents to manage cases on Android devices, iPhones, iPads or Amazon Kindles.

"Salesforce.com is doubling down on mobile," says Alex Bard, General Manager of Service Cloud, Salesforce.com. "The first in a series of innovations we'll deliver this year, Service Cloud Mobile is helping customer companies transform the way they deliver customer service for the mobile era."

IE 10 finally comes to Windows 7

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The long-promised Internet Explorer 10 is finally available for Windows 7 users as Microsoft suddenly remembers that there are a few of you out there.

You'll need Service Pack 1 installed, but if you're running Windows 7 and haven't blocked the upgrade, it should install automatically through Windows Update - those of you with the IE10 Release Preview installed will get the update today.

IE 10 on Windows 7 has many, but not all of the features of IE 10 on Windows 8. You only get the desktop version of the browser, not the full-screen Windows 8 version, and Flash is still a separate plugin that you have to update yourself.

Same same but different

You do get the same much-improved support for web standards, built-in spell check and autocorrect, faster tab closing - and the stalled privacy protecting Do Not Track setting is enabled by default.

Microsoft says IE 10 is up to 20 per cent faster than IE9 on the same system, which you can test for yourself in the new HTML5 version of Minesweeper on the IE Test Drive site.

When we asked about the delay between shipping Windows 8 and IE 10 last year and delivering it for Windows 7 this week, a Microsoft spokesperson put the emphasis on quality (rather than how much of the IE team is busy building IE 11 for Windows 9, say).

Apple to cool hot water over kids' app bills with iTunes credit

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Apple is planning to offer parents compensation for the iTunes bills their kids racked up on in-app purchases.

The fruity phone maker has been in hot water with a group of parents who sued it in 2011 on the basis that their children had been able to run up monstrous charges while playing games on iPad, iPhone or iPod touch that had been positioned as free.

The compensation that Apple has pitched will see it give $5 iTunes credit to parents who claim that a minor bought in-game items without their knowledge or permission ($5 is the equivalent of around £3.50 / AU$5).

If their little darlings spent between $5 and $30 (about £20 / AU$30), Apple will refund the amount in iTunes credit - anything over $30 can be claimed as a cash refund.

Settle down

The proposed settlement document fails to outline exactly how many users will be eligible to claim a refund. It also doesn't say whether it will be restricted to US customers or if the rest of the world will be able to claim that, er, yeah it was my kid that racked up $693 keeping a virtual fish alive, not me. Honest.

This won't be a permanent deal, however - if the court OKs the settlement, there'll be a notification period during which parents will have to make their claims.

After that, we imagine Apple's updated terms will keep it from having to shell this kind of credit out again.

Anger as Facebook bans Instagram-like Vintage Camera app

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Facebook has today been accused of unfairly favouring Instagram after banning photo uploads from a popular rival iPhone app.

The makers of Vintage Camera, which like Facebook-owned Instagram allows users to add retro-style filters to photos, were recently shocked to hear the social network had restricted uploads from the app.

When developers Presselite appealed, Facebook cited "negative feedback from users and their friends" and said it would not be restoring functionality to the app, which has an estimated 8 million users.

The ban, according to Presselite, is despite Vintage Camera receiving only one negative report per 1,000 images the community of users had uploaded.

Bad influence?

The French company suspects foul play and suggested that Facebook may be seeking to eliminate rival services that may potentially pose a threat to Instagram.

Co-founder Antoine Morcos said in a statement: "We don't understand how Facebook could block the access to millions of users of the Vintage Camera application who want to share their photos on Facebook, only because of a few negative feedback reports

"As you all know, Facebook has acquired the Instagram photo-sharing application, and we hope this acquisition is not influencing this kind of access limitation for other photo applications."

Facebook: App had been warned

In response, Facebook told the BBC that Vintage Camera had been subject to several warnings before its access was restricted and had chances to fall in line with its policies.

The social network said: "Pending on the violation, we give developers an opportunity to come into compliance via a warning system.

"In the case of this application, the application was not in compliance with our platform policies and had received three warnings prior to our systems taking action on the application."

TechRadar asked Facebook for further clarification and will update this story if and when a response is forthcoming.

Shazam celebrates 300 million users with new tablet apps

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Shazam, the music-tagging app that tells you what you're listening to so you don't have to Google the lyrics, has surpassed 300 million users worldwide, the company announced today.

That's no small feat - according to a report from Strategy Analytics, there are a little more than 1 billion smartphone users as of October 2012.

Any app used by almost a third of smartphone users can probably be considered a success.

To celebrate, Shazam announced plans to release redesigned apps for iPads and Android tablets "in the coming weeks."

More social than ever

We still use Shazam mainly to find out the names of whatever annoying new songs are playing on the radio and in bars, but the company announced that the new Shazam tablet apps will make social and mapping features more prominent.

Users of the new Shazam apps will be able to view activity streams to find out what songs and TV shows are being tagged most often and see what people are tagging in any city in the world.

Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher called it "the most efficient way to experience more of the media around you" in a press release.

The app will include a newly redesigned home screen that emphasizes social features, an interactive map that shows tags around the world, improved friend features, faster tagging, automatic re-submission if your initial tag attempts fail due to poor reception, and better integration with other social networks for easier sharing via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Gmail.

Free users get some too

Shazam also announced that users of the free version of the app will get some nice bonuses soon as well: faster tagging and lyrics display for tagged songs.

The press release also mentioned that the iOS Shazam app is universal, so it seems as if the incoming iPad update will work on iPhones and iPods as well.

No word on whether the same applies to Android devices, but TechRadar asked Shazam to find out and we'll update this story when we hear more.

MWC 2013: Windows Phone: Will 130,000 apps be enough to spark Nokia revival?

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Ask an Android or iPhone loyalist why they aren't considering a switch to Windows Phone 8 and they'll probably reference the inferior app catalogue.

Well, if those same skeptics were to ask Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, he'd tell them that users of Microsoft's new operating system now have 130,000 applications at their fingertips.

That's exactly what Elop did during Nokia's MWC 2013 keynote in Barcelona, where the Finnish company unveiled the affordable, mid-range Lumia 720 and Lumia 520 Windows Phone 8 devices.

Speaking on Microsoft's behalf Elop said: "Today we are proud to announce that we have achieved the level of 130,000 Windows Phone applications. That's 130,000 applications tailor made for the Windows Phone experience."

Quality and quantity

Of course, the figure still pales in comparison to iOS and Android - which are both hovering around the 750,000 mark - but it does represent solid progress for Microsoft in its attempts to attract the developer community.

Despite referencing the numbers, Elop still believes that it's more about the quality of the applications that have arrived as well as those Microsoft and Nokia are working to bring to the WP platform.

"Together with Microsoft we are bring unique experiences from some of the world's top brands to our phones. It is more than just about the volume of applications, we are also focussed on the quality of the application experience," Elop said.

"We are opening up our core technologies and APIs in areas like imaging and location-based service to the developers. We believe that access to these capabilities will inspire never before seen applications that will be unique to Nokia."

Nokia is hoping to crack the lower end of the market - an area where it has enjoyed the majority of its success - with its new Lumia 720 and Lumia 520 handsets, and open up Windows Phone 8 to a new group of consumers. Hopefully for both companies, an end to the app stigma will do the trick.

Nokia's maps and navigation apps spread to more Windows Phones

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Nokia announced it's spreading the app love by making its trio of map and navigation apps available across all Windows Phone 8 devices.

Previously only available on Nokia's own Windows Phones, all users can now download the Here Maps, Here Drive Beta, and Here Transit apps.

The three free apps are integrated together to offer users maps, turn-by-turn directions, and public transportation maps, both online and when disconnected from a network.

Offline maps are available for 94 countries, along with interior maps for select locations like airports, stadiums, and malls in over more than countries.

Navigating to a wider audience

Curiously, despite Nokia's commitment to Windows Phone last year, the company launched its trio of Here Maps apps as a single download on iOS.

The iOS arrival conveniently came as Apple's own maps app suffered a rocky start, though it was quickly overshadowed by the launch of Google Maps not long afterward.

While there is still no official Google Maps app for Windows Phone to compete with Nokia's offering, last month the search giant revealed that it will at least optimize the mobile Google Maps site to run in the Internet Explorer mobile browser.

Users looking for a new navigation option on Windows Phone 8 can download the Here Maps, Here Drive Beta, and Here Transit apps from the Windows Store starting today. They are available in the U.S. and U.K. along with Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Spain.

Yahuui Blog

Tuesday, February 26, 2013