Software : GS1 and Open Mobile Alliance call for input on barcode specs |
- GS1 and Open Mobile Alliance call for input on barcode specs
- Aruba Networks picks up apps for maps developer
- Updated: Best browser: which should you be using?
- Should you choose Office, Google or OpenOffice?
| GS1 and Open Mobile Alliance call for input on barcode specs Posted:  Supply chain standards organisation GS1 and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) are calling for input into their work on a new set of barcode specifications to support developers in providing scanning apps for mobile devices. The two organisations aim to launch the new specifications next year. They already have a number of companies onboard, including Fujitsu, NEC and AT&T, and are now asking others to join in. GS1 and OMA are basing the work on existing standards to make it easier for application developers to link apps to trusted content and to release them more quickly and at a lower cost. PotentialThey say the new spec should enable mobile manufacturers and network operators to build handsets with the following capabilities:
GS1 and OMA claim the this will make it easier for application developers to link apps to trusted content, as well as releasing them quicker and at a lower cost. They say consumers will benefit through a new generation of more intuitive applications. GS1 manages the system of product barcodes used by nearly 2 million companies on billions of products across the world. It has been working with the OMA, which creates mobile standards and APIs, since 2011. Fragmented ecosystemBryan Sullivan, OMA Board of Directors Vice Chairman, said the industry is working with a barcodes ecosystem that is fragmented by non-standard solutions. "This specification will enable application developer innovation for the mCommerce and mobile advertising industry, allowing companies to develop interoperable and scalable applications," he said. A study by Comscore in September found that the UK ranks below Spain, Italy, Germany and France in terms of the number of smartphone users scanning Quick Response (QR) codes with their mobile devices. France had the most number of users, while Spain ranked as the fastest growing market. |
| Aruba Networks picks up apps for maps developer Posted:  Aruba Networks has acquired Meridian Apps, a US start-up that offers an app-making platform for creating indoor map services for mobile devices, for an undisclosed sum. It's aiming to bring Meridian's platform together with its own wireless technology for smartphones and tablets to enable businesses to create services that combine locations with information gathered from users' devices. This could enable businesses to send details of in-venue promotions and discounts, along with directions on how to find them, to customers' mobile devices. Meridian's software is aimed at public-facing businesses including shops, retail centres, transport hubs and museums. They can use the platform to create custom-branded apps to help people find what they have to offer, and detailed analytics about visitors' travel patterns. Revenue enablerAruba recently revealed "disappointing" results for its latest financial quarter, which saw revenue decline 5% quarter-on-quarter to $147.1 million (£96.7 million), while product revenue decreased 7% quarter-on-quarter to $121.2 million (£80 million). On a conference call with analysts, Aruba co-founder and CTO Keerti Melkote said the addition of Meridian will let enterprises "tap into all their information so that they can better engage with customers with personalisation and real time analytics". He added: "This is a clear opportunity for Wi-Fi to become not only an enabling platform for 'bring your own device' but now across industries, a revenue-producing, customer engagement platform for the business." |
| Updated: Best browser: which should you be using? Posted:  Competition among browsers is more fierce than ever. Chrome and Firefox release 72 new versions every week, Microsoft has redesigned Internet Explorer to make it finger-friendly, and as we all race to tablets and smartphones we're being tempted with all kinds of alternatives to systems' stock browsers. But which is the best browser for you and your hardware? Let's find out. We tested the latest official releases of the big browsers - Internet Explorer 10, Firefox 19, Safari 5, Chrome 25 and Opera 12 - on a Core i5 PC running Windows 8 Pro. It's worth noting that Safari on Macs running OS X Mountain Lion is at version 6, but the PC version and older Mac versions are one behind. Whether you've got a Windows PC, Mac OS X laptop, an Android tablet or something in between, we've got it covered. The best browser for speed
Every browser we tested felt perfectly snappy in everyday browsing, but as ever we put them through the Sunspider benchmark tests to see how well they fared. IE raced through the tests in 97ms in desktop mode, while the touch-based IE took 113.7 milliseconds. Those numbers are amazing: it wasn't that long ago that IE benchmarks were measured in millennia. Chrome was next, at 147.2ms, Firefox was narrowly behind with 176.6ms, Opera scored 180.5ms and Safari was narrowly beaten into last place with 182.7ms. The best browser for add-ons
Firefox has always been the king here, its combination of add-ons, App Tabs for web apps and Greasemonkey scripts making it the power user's friend. That's still the case, but Chrome is catching up fast, its Web Store positively packed. Apple and Microsoft's selections are fairly thin, but Opera's selection includes commonly used add-ons such as ad blockers, password managers and so on. Opera deserves a special mention here because it's more than just a browser. It has integrated email, newsgroups and IRC chat, the Opera Unite file server, Opera Turbo to improve performance on crappy mobile connections, and Sidebar-style widgets for games, web applications and utilities. The best browser for Windows 7
Safari simply doesn't cut it in this company: it's last year's browser, the slowest here, and we don't like the user interface very much. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but there's nothing particularly right with it either. Long-term browser battle fans will be highly amused by IE's performance these days: it's really, really quick, comfortably ahead of its rivals, and now everyone's making their browsers as minimalist as possible there's no horrible UI to get angry at unless you start going crazy with third-party toolbars. Please don't. For sheer speed on Windows 7 PCs, IE is the browser to go for. The best browser for Windows 8If you're sold on the new touchy-feely direction of Windows 8 then Internet Explorer is the star, at least in Metro/Modern mode: it's a very nice touch-based browser, although it doesn't support Flash. Firefox has a Metro version in development, but it's not quite ready for prime time just yet. In desktop mode it's the same story as with Windows 7: Safari knocked out first, IE winning on sheer speed and Chrome and Firefox competing on syncing and extensions support. The best browser for Windows XPInternet Explorer takes an early bath here, because it no longer supports Windows XP or Windows Vista. Our pick here would be Chrome: its system requirements are tiny (Pentium 4, 100MB of disk space, 128MB of free RAM), making it particularly good on even very modest hardware. The best browser for OS X
We tried the main browsers on a Core i5 iMac, and while the results were similar on paper - Safari went through Sunspider in a reported 197.4ms, only slightly behind Chrome's 164ms and slightly faster than Opera's 201ms and Firefox's 204ms - the reality was different: where the other browsers raced through Sunspider in a matter of seconds, Safari took several minutes. We also found its performance nose-dived when we had more than a handful of tabs open, and opening image-heavy sites such as Tumblr archives was a fairly reliable way to kill it completely. The other browsers felt noticeably nippier visiting the same sites. There's more to the browsers than just speed, of course. Safari offers a clutter-free reading mode, Reading List for reading interesting things later on and iCloud syncing with iOS devices; Firefox has Firefox Sync; Opera has the Unite file sharing system and Visual Tabs and so on. For simply browsing we think Chrome has the edge here, but you might find that your chosen sync service - iCloud? Firefox? Chrome? - makes the browser choice for you. The best browser for privacy
While each browser offers a decent range of privacy protection, they're not all enabled by default - so for example Firefox's Do Not Track button is unchecked when you install it, and so is Opera's. Safari for Windows doesn't have a Do Not Track setting - as we've already said, it's a comparatively old browser - and Chrome buries its privacy controls in the Advanced Settings section. We like Microsoft's approach here: its Tracking Protection Lists offer something more useful than a broad-brush Do Not Track system, enabling you to block specific kinds of tracking such as advertisers who really want to flog stuff to your kids. The best browser for HTML5
HTML5 is the lingua franca of the modern web, and the better your browser's standards support the happier your online life will be. Using HTML5test.com, which awards up to 500 points for standards compliance, we found Chrome the clear winner with 448 points and 13 bonus points. Opera had 404 and 9 bonus points, Firefox 393 and 13, Safari (OS X) 393 and 13, Internet Explorer 320 and 6, and finally Safari (Windows) had just 278 and 2 bonus points. The best browser for Android
Android users are spoilt for choice these days. In our head-to-head of the best Android browsers, several apps shone. Chrome shone for its speed and its integration with its desktop sibling; Dolphin Browser HD for its bulging features list; and Skyfire for its many bright ideas. Once again Chrome has the edge here in the speed stakes, but it's worth looking at rivals' features before committing to it. The best browser for iPad
The lack of tabs in Apple's Safari drove us daft on the original iPad, but now it's got tabbed browsing and iCloud syncing we think it's the best browser on the platform, especially on the newest devices. In our experience it's faster and more reliable than iCab Mobile, considerably nicer to look at than Atomic Browser, and less likely to dump you back to the home screen for no good reason than non-Apple browsers. That's unless you use Chrome on the desktop and want to sync tabs, bookmarks and passwords, in which case Chrome's the one to go for. |
| Should you choose Office, Google or OpenOffice? Posted:  Microsoft Office remains the default option for 'office productivity' software. The most recent version being Office 2013, the suite of programs is better known by its key components: Microsoft Word for producing documents, Excel for spreadsheets and PowerPoint for presentations. But it comes at a cost, and for some businesses, cloud computing and open source software offer better options, sometimes for free. Small businesses tend to buy Microsoft Office along with a computer, not least because this is usually been the cheapest option. The basic version of Office 2013 for small business – which also includes Microsoft Outlook, the email and calendar package – adds £159 (exclusive of VAT, as with all prices mentioned here) to the price of a Dell PC or laptop, although discounts are sometimes available. Cloud computing – which simply means using the internet, rather than your own computers, to store files and software – offers an alternative. It can provide access from any device with an internet connection, including tablet computers and smartphones, although screen size may make access tricky with the latter. And you can get everything offered by Microsoft Office, along with some interesting extras, from Google for free at a basic level. Gmail optionGoogle's Gmail is well known as a free webmail service, but through Google Drive (formerly known as Google Docs) the firm also offers equivalents of Word, Excel and PowerPoint in a web browser. These have pros: files are available anywhere and can be used by several people in several locations simultaneously, with users able to see what their colleagues are doing. There is also the option of linking in other Google services such as Fusion Tables, which generates maps with clickable pointers from spreadsheets; Analytics, which analyses web traffic; and its paid-for advertising service AdWords. These can all use the same log-in, although some have little integration with other Google services. However, there are significant drawbacks. The components of Microsoft Office tend to have more features, so advanced users of spreadsheets are likely to need to stick with Excel. Also, many users have been trained or become accustomed to Microsoft, and there is a cost, at least in time, in retraining them to use an alternative. But if you have far-flung staff who need only basic office software functionality, Google's products may well be sufficient, particularly as most people have a Google account that can be set to give them access. Business choiceThe firm packages them together in a higher spec version called Google Apps for Business, which provides 25GB of space rather than 10GB in the free version. It allows you to use your own domain name rather than gmail.com and a guarantee on availability – costing £3.30 a month per user with a month's free trial. For those who want to stick with Microsoft, the firm has hit back with Office 365 , a cloud computing version of its software suite that includes Outlook as well as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Documents can be saved online in Microsoft's SkyDrive service, which can also be used by normal versions of Office 2013, and the files are compatible with desktop versions of Microsoft Office 2007, 2010 and 2013. The basic small business service costs £3.90 a month a user, or £39.60 a year – working out at the same monthly £3.30 charged by Google. It has similar specifications, too, with 25GB of storage space, the ability to use your own domain name, support and an availability guarantee, and a free month's trial. There is also a £100 per user per year option which provides the software on your own computers, as well as other features. A further option, either as an alternative or in addition to cloud computing, is open source software. Apache OpenOffice is an office productivity package that can be used for any purpose free of download and licence fees. Its components, which include Writer for word processing, the Calc spreadsheet and Impress for presentations (as well as drawing and database software), have a level of functionality much closer to Microsoft Office than Google Apps, and they function as a single piece of software rather than a suite of connected ones. SupportIn terms of support, you get what you pay for with free software – there is a lot of advice online, but no guarantees. But OpenOffice has been around for 20 years and is used widely: since its latest version, 3.4, was released in May 2012, it has been downloaded more than 44 million times. Also, as with Microsoft Office's 'normal' version, it will work offline, whereas cloud computing is only as good and fast as your internet connection. A smart business, even one with a very limited budget, should consider mixing and matching. Microsoft, Google and OpenOffice can all use open file formats that work in different types of software – for example, Google and OpenOffice can open Microsoft Word's .doc and .docx formats – although don't assume the results will always look exactly the same when viewed or printed. If you fancy sticking your head in the cloud for office software, by using Google Apps or Office 365, you can always provide staff with a free version of OpenOffice as well to allow them to work offline. |
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