Software : Download of the day: McAfee Stinger

Download of the day: McAfee Stinger
Best free software of 2014: Evernote
Industry voice: The future of the omnichannel experience

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Use McAfee Stinger if you want to clear out an infection on your computer and restore it to a clean bill of health.

Why you need it

If you know you PC is infected with malware, you'll need a program like McAfee Stinger. This free tool targets worms, trojans and viruses already lurking on your computer, then rapidly destroys them to leave your PC infection-free once more.

Why, you ask, do you need McAfee Stinger when your own antivirus software already exterminates threats? Well, Stinger is a much more targeted tool, searching in the registry and directories that viruses use to avoid the long scans performed by your antivirus program. That means Stinger can find threats that your regular software may well miss.

There's no installation required, just double click on the .exe file to load up McAfee Stinger. That makes it ideal for when you need to eliminate a threat as quickly as possible.

NOTE: McAfee Stinger is not a replacement for your normal virus scanner. You should scan your system regularly using antivirus software to look for infections; if you find anything, you can then use McAfee Stinger to rid yourself of the infection.

Key features

Works on: PC
Versions: Free
Find threats: McAfee Stinger looks in places that viruses are known to hide – places that your antivirus software may miss
Clean your system: Target and delete all known infections on your computer

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Best free software of 2014: Evernote

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Having become synonymous with work (their slogan is "a workspace for your life's work") and now boasting over 90 million users, Evernote have spent 2014 updating their apps across all operating systems, including Windows 8. In October, the Evernote team announced a new app and a major redesign, thus increasing the company's hold on the productivity market.

Evernote operates as a multi-purpose notebook – the Swiss army knife of notebooks, if you will – and can bundle together a myriad of different types of media into one place, including voice, images, pen input and the typed word. Alongside this, clippings can also be saved and notebooks shared. Evernote's uses extend far and wide.

Using Evernote is free and operates on a tiered payment system, with the "Premium" option enhancing search features and adding the ability to search offline notebooks on mobile. Just as with Spotify, the Premium tier offers the most value and is thus worth investing in.

As an app that has grown into an indispensable piece of software during 2014, Evernote has more than earned its place in this series.

Industry voice: The future of the omnichannel experience

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Throughout 2014 we have witnessed a massive surge in digital technology, especially around mobile. As a result of these advances in digital and mobile technologies, today's businesses and brands have more marketing tools available to them than ever before.

However, these advancements are often outpacing an organisation's ability to interact, not only with their customers, but also with each other internally as there are so many tools at their disposal.

It is evident that those brands that focus on engagement via a single channel, such as email, social or mobile, can become leaders but it is this limited focus that disables a business' capabilities to provide a consistent unified experience to a consumer across a number of channels.

This year, we've seen many leading retailers strive to offer their customers a seamless omnichannel experience, investing heavily in upgrading their digital infrastructure in a bid to move closer to obtaining the mythical 'single customer view'. But is this really working in practice?

Over the past year we have seen many business that have created siloed environments, data points and analytics that drive consumer communication that is relative to just one channel, such as web, with no cross federation of customer data and profile analytics to another channel, such as the app.

For example, as a consumer, if I'm on my app, I receive communications based on what I do in my app. If I am on the website on my laptop, I receive an email, often post event, to recap on what I was looking at and suggest new things I should look at or do on the website. Occasionally l may see a pop up on the website which references what I am currently doing. Does this really sound like an omnichannel experience to you?

This apparent lack of an omnichannel experience is predominantly driven by the fact that companies are unable to "identify" users or people across all the interaction points and channels and understand what they do and what channels they use regularly in an aggregated view.

This aggregated view would allow businesses and brands to be able to instigate communications based on what users are doing across the entire digital estate. For example, if I were to do one thing via one channel, I would receive a communication across all channels or a specific channel relative to driving a marketing objective.

These interactions should take place in real time when the consumer is engaged and are accessing the brand. Of course interactions can take place "post event" but all metrics suggest real-time interactions increase conversions.

As a result, brands should be looking to create an aggregated view of their digital estate and the "people" that sit behind them, throughout 2015 and beyond. By having this information at their disposal, real personalisation can occur across channels. We believe that key to capturing the omnichannel consumer is this linked-up approach.

To ensure consistency, brands and businesses must connect multiple customer touch points and understand and communicate with people and not just the users of individual devices. All interactions will be driven by customer name not just behaviour allowing consolidation of data, CRM and analytics. This will allow true real-time and valued post event communications, which will in turn unify the experience.

By proxy this visibility will save significant investment around acquisition across channels as many times businesses and brands pay to acquire "people" that have already been acquired on another channel but just don't know it.

Paul Putman is the Chief Executive Officer, Donky

Yahuui Blog

Monday, December 29, 2014