Software : Salesforce survey states obvious: technology makes sales easier

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• Salesforce survey states obvious: technology makes sales easier
• Serif launches full on Photoshop rival at one third the price
• iOS Tips: Apple Music: 10 best tips and tricks to maximize your music
• New Uber feature knows where the best pickup spots are near you
• 40 best Android Wear smartwatch apps 2015

Salesforce survey states obvious: technology makes sales easier Posted: Businesses are keen to predict the future. As a result, predictive sales analytics usage will increase 135% over the next year and a half, according to a new report from Salesforce.com. The report, which surveyed more than 2,300 sales executives worldwide, found that organizations that are performing above expectations are 3.5 times more likely to use sales analytics than organizations that self-identify as underperforming. One of the reasons a gulf has emerged between successful teams and struggling teams is mobile sales technology. The report reveals that successful organizations are five times more likely to rate their mobile sales capabilities as outstanding or very good, and 60% of these teams use or are planning to use a mobile sales application. The harsh reality Conversely, only 9% of underperforming teams use mobile apps in their sales processes. In general, self-identifying high-performing sales teams are more than twice as likely to be heavy tech adopters than moderate and under-performing teams, according to the report. For organizations that are struggling to accept the technologization of sales, a new, more complex reality is emerging. Not only are smartphones and tablets taking over the sales process, but 83% of all sales teams are currently using or planning to use wearables in some form in the next two years. A grain of salt Obviously, as one of the leading providers of sales applications, the findings of this report butter Salesforce's bread. In the past year, Salesforce has been an aggressive proponent of sales apps for wearable devices. The San Francisco-based CRM giant has worked with Apple to design apps for the Apple Watch in order to provide sales teams with access to glanceable information and notifications. Salesforce launched the Salesforce Wave and Salesforce1 apps for Apple Watch along with a new SDK for partners to create their own wearable apps. So, it should come as no surprise that Salesforce is responsible for a report that sounds the alarm for the technologization of sales. Despite this obvious bias, it's pretty much a no-brainer that access to customers, teammates and data across multiple portable devices is beneficial to all businesses. Which are the 10 CRM systems your business needs to know?

Serif launches full on Photoshop rival at one third the price Posted: Serif is best-know for its budget Windows image-editing, illustration, web design and layout tools. Its brand new Affinity range, though, is designed solely for Macs and aimed squarely at professionals. Affinity Designer, Serif's brand new professional graphic design and illustration tool, was the first Affinity product to arrive in October 2014, and scored a Mac App Store 'Best of 2014' in the process. Affinity Photo, announced in February 2015, uses the same core processing engine and aims to do for image-editing what Affinity Designer has done for illustration and vector art. Professional features Many so-called Photoshop rivals are actually much more basic consumer-orientated editing tools aimed at people who don't really know any better, but Affinity Photo is the real deal. It offers key tools and technologies essential in a professional environment, including 16-bit editing, RGB, CMYK and LAB color modes, ICC colour profiles and RAW development. It can also import and export Photoshop PSD files. Its layout and operation is similar to Photoshop's, with a clean and simple vertical tools panel on the left of the screen and stacked (detachable) palettes on the right. It takes some acclimatization after Photoshop, but the basic principles of layers, masks, selections and adjustment tools are the same. The difference lies in Serif's processing engine, which has been designed to exploit the full potential of today's 16-bit hardware with fast, real-time adjustments that show changes 'live' as you work so that you don't have to close a dialog first or wait for the image to redraw between fine adjustments. Read: Serif Affinity Photo hands on review The low price may pitch Affinity Photo in with a whole bunch of other Photoshop wanabees, but it's a very different, much more powerful product that just happens to be cheap – how often does that happen? Affinity Photo is being sold on the Mac App Store at an introductory price of £29.99/US$39.99 until July 23rd 2015. After that it reverts to its regular price of £39.99/US$49.99. Its introductory price makes it less than one third of the cost of a one-year subscription to Adobe's Photography Plan. The Adobe plan does include both Photoshop and Lightroom, but not every photographer will want to use both, and many still resist the idea of paying subscriptions to 'rent' an application. Affinity Photo is an alternative that combines the latest software technology with a classic one-off payment model.

iOS Tips: Apple Music: 10 best tips and tricks to maximize your music Posted: Master Apple Music Unless you have something against oodles of free music, you probably signed up for the Apple Music trial last week. Even if you have no plans on ever actually paying, you can still stream for the rest of the summer, which is more than enough time to get closely acquainted with Apple's new service. And that's good, because there's a lot to absorb. Whether you're coming from iTunes Radio, Spotify, or Beats Music, Apple has made its music service unique (some might say confusing) enough to require a bit steeper of a learning curve than the usual Apple product. But after using it for the past week, we've unearthed some tips and tricks that will help you listen like a pro. Find fantastic playlists Apple has curated dozens of playlists spanning all sorts of genres and activities, from one-hit wonders and chart-topping sensations to graduation tunes and motivational workout jams. But finding them isn't so easy. Apple spotlights a smattering of them on its For You and New home screens, but if none of them strike your fancy, you can easily search for more. Just type the word "curator" or "playlist" into the search field and you'll see a lengthy list of what's available. And if you want something specific, you can filter by genre too. Make a mix When you tap the ellipses at the end of a song, artist or album, you'll get a menu of options that let you add it to a playlist, buy it in the iTunes Store or share it on Twitter or Facebook. But if you want to make a quick mix of songs that don't rise to the level of a playlist, you can queue them up by selecting "Add to Up Next." You'll find the songs you've selected by tapping the list icon in the full-screen Now Playing window (drag up on the small bar at the bottom of the screen), where they can be rearranged, changed, and deleted - just like if you were a real DJ. Find other songs by an artist If you're listening to a song on Beats 1 or other radio station and you want to see what else the artist has recorded, you can either tap the magnifying glass and search their name, or you can use the more-convenient ellipses menu. While you won't see a option for "Find More Music by This Artist," you can tap the song title at the top of the expanded menu to jump right to the artist page. Change your musical tastes When you first sign up for the Apple Music trial, you'll be met with a series of red balls representing your musical tastes, which Apple's curators and algorithms use to generate the content on your For You page. But if you hastily zipped through it the first time around or are just unhappy with the recommendations you're getting, you can fine-tune your selections. Just click on the account icon in the left corner and head to the Choose Artists For You tab. Inside you can refine, expand and reset your selections. More personalization Speaking of For You, the red bubbles are just part of the personalization process. Liking a song by tapping the heart icon will affect what's displayed (though skipping does not), and tapping and holding on a suggested album or playlist lets you tell Apple Music that you don't like the selection. Disconnect from Connect Connect is one the main features of Apple Music, but if you're not feeling it, Apple has given you a secret way to turn it off. You'll find the toggle hiding in the Settings app. Head over to Restrictions in the General tab and turn it on (it'll prompt you to create a unique passcode). Then you'll be able to switch Connect off, bringing back the dedicated Playlists tab. Tell Beats 1 what to play Alongside its subscription Music service, Apple rolled out something a bit more old-fashioned: a free, live radio station with scheduled programming that's surprisingly good. And in true terrestrial radio fashion, its DJs take requests. To get a song played, just head over to Apple's Beats 1 Tumblr page (http://applemusic.tumblr.com/requests) and find the number for the country you live in. Of course, you could hear it quicker if you just played it yourself, but somehow it sounds better when the rest of the world is listening with you. Play it again Unless you're obsessively adding songs to your music library, it's going to be hard to remember all of those great tunes you heard while exercising. Thankfully, Apple has collected them for you. You'll find a handy list in the Up Next menu; tap the icon in the Now Playing window and scroll down to see your complete history - whether you played the song yourself or heard it on one of the radio stations. Listen locally As long as you keep paying for Apple Music, the songs you save to your music library are yours to play, whether you're connected to a network or not. To store them on your iPhone and listen to them in places where a signal isn't available, tap that ellipses menu again and select "Make Available Offline" to download it. And when you want to listen to it, make sure the "Show Music Available Offline" toggle - which you'll find by tapping the Artists/Albums/Songs menu - is switched to green. Old-school Music If you decide all of these new-fangled streaming features of Apple Music aren't for you, you can turn them off and make your Music app to the way it used to be (more or less). Go to Settings > Music and deactivate the Show Apple Music switch to remove the recommendation and on-demand streaming features. The buttons at the bottom of the app (Music, For You, New, Radio, Connect) will be partially replaced, but you'll still be able to listen to local music and radio stations, and the Connect option will remain as well - unless you switched it off using our earlier tip.

New Uber feature knows where the best pickup spots are near you Posted: Uber has begun testing a new feature that should make actually getting picked up by a an Uber car safer and easier. The new "suggested pickup points" feature, spotted by TechCrunch, is being tested in the San Francisco area, though only some users are seeing the feature right now. The suggestions show up as green spots on the map, which indicates areas Uber cars can pull over safely and more easily to pick up passengers, likely based on information where Uber cars have stopped in the past. However, the feature doesn't necessarily take note of your current location or which direction you need to go, meaning you might be picked up going south when you need to head northward. You can drop your pin on a green dot, which will show the address so you can walk to it, though you aren't restricted to the suggested locations - you can still drop your pin anywhere you want to the Uber to get you. There's been no confirmation yet if the feature will be tested or rolled out across the US, but we've asked Uber for just this info and we'll update as we hear more information. Uber's maps is about to get even better with Micosoft's mapping technology

40 best Android Wear smartwatch apps 2015 Posted: Android Wear apps 1-10 Although Apple Watch captured headlines when it appeared, Android Wear had a year's head start on it and continues to tick along nicely, with its May update now rolling out across compatible devices, making it more powerful than Apple's Watch in many respects. The flow of devices may have slowed to a gentle trickle, but the likes of Sony's Smart Watch 3, LG's G Watch Urbane and Motorola's Moto 360 continue to fly the flag for Google's wearable OS. There are now hundreds of apps available for the OS, augmenting your Android Wearable's powers beyond the standard notifications 'n' fitness realm. Some are decidedly lacklustre, but to help you avoid the real chaff, we've picked 40 of our favourites, in no particular order… Toggles Wear £0.81 Take all the settings from your phone that you often need to flip on and off quickly, such as airplane mode, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and silent mode to name just a few, and transfer them to your watch face in one handy group. You can also check your battery life and see how much data you're using, all on the same screen. UhrArt WearFaces Free One of the simplest yet key USPs of a smartwatch is being able to customise the display. This app lets you pick from a packed gallery of round or square faces from the WearFace community - http://wearfaces.com/featured/ - and you can also create and share your own designs. An essential first purchase for any new Android Wear user. Wear Mini Launcher Free Opening and using an app on an Android Wear device can be fiddly; this takes the hassle away by letting you quickly launch any app without heaps of scrolling and swiping. It also helps you quickly access settings, such as brightness, Wi-Fi and ringtones for your smartphone, while granting access to loads of customisation options. Hundreds of thousands of downloads can't be wrong. Tinder Free You know the deal: swipe right to like, left to pass, like a horny modern day Roman Emperor. But what you might not know is that the phenomenon that is Tinder and Android Wear is a match made in heaven. Just say "Start Tinder" to start swiping, send messages and view profiles all from the privacy of your wrist. IFTTT Free Named as one of Google's best apps of 2014, IFTTT stands for "If This Then That" and lets you link your 'Channels' - i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Gmail etc - by creating 'Recipes'. So, for instance, you can set things up so when you like an Instagram photo it's instantly saved to your Dropbox. You can do this, get alerts and more straight from your Wear device. WatchMaker Premium Watch Face £1.39 Build up a collection of watch faces for your Wear device, complete with animations, calendars, multiple time zones, stopwatches, countdowns to special occasions… anything you can think of. There are thousands to choose from and up to eight new designs are added to the collection each week. Dragon Laser Free We love this Tetris-style block game for its simple, retro-futuristic Tron-ish graphics. The game itself is a classic format - drop the 4-block bricks to form complete lines to clear them and net yourself a high score - but it's no less addictive for its familiarity. You can also check the time while you play, which had us sold. That and the fact it's free. Yo Free A charmingly simple premise, Yo allows you to "get notified about the things you love as they happen". You can add links to your Yos and also Yo your location to your contacts. You can also Yo your location to specific Yo-collaborating accounts which will tell you the best places to go near you. When it's this easy, there's no excuse to be a recluse. Mini Dialer £1.27 Open the Mini Dialer app or say 'Open Mini Dialer' and you can then initiate phone calls from your watch. You can access your contacts, speed dial preferences and call log, or simply use the number pad to make an outbound call. End phone calls with a tap and set it up to enable auto speakerphone, all while your phone stays safely tucked in your pocket. Android Wear apps 11-20 Evernote for Android Wear Free Loads of you will be long-time Evernote fans and won't want to use Google Keep, the default note app for Wear devices. Well, you needn't have to. Evernote for Android Wear lets you create notes through voice command, check off to-dos by tapping your watch or find notes by speaking the text that you're looking for. Simple and highly effective. Wear Store for Wear Apps Free If you've just got your Wear device you'll probably go to the Google Play store to have a browse, or you can come to us, but you should also download Wear Store, a handy service that lays out all the Wear apps in easy-to-navigate categories, from time added, name, rating, function and ratings. It also has video reviews and handy tips. Weather Timeline £0.99 With a five star average over 4,000+ ratings, everyone is raving about this excellent weather app. Its main focus is to present the weather conditions in three formats: the next hour, next 48 hours and next week. Colours play an important role in giving you a quick insight into the mood of the weather gods and you can even check what the weather was like decades ago, if you wanted to. Golf Swing Analyzer £1.58 Record your golf swing at up to 200 samples per second, then receive data reports on your swing speed, tempo, swing plane, impact angle, path, grip angle and power. You can also download a visualisation of your swing in 3D and rotate to view it at any angle. There's no hardware to buy, no calibration and you don't need to change any settings when you change club. Wear Aware Free This app spells the end to leaving the house without your phone, as when you and your handset become unbearably far apart your watch will start buzzing in a mad panic. It also doubles as a phone locator; just say "OK Google, start Phone Finder" and your mobile will start sounding an alarm signal, even if you've got it switched to silent mode. Tennis Racketeering Free In one hand you have your phone - displaying the virtual tennis court - and your other arm (the one with the watch on it) is where you hold your invisible racket. You can then play a game of tennis, Kinect-style, either solo or against someone else using their own phone and Wear device. Your phone and Wear will work together to sense how hard you're hitting the ball and, naturally, in what direction. Memory Info for Wear Free And now without any fanfare whatsoever: Memory Info for Wear. This app has no bells and is also completely devoid of any whistles. All it does is simply provide information about internal memory for your Android Wear Device. To switch to a more detailed analysis, click on one of the icon on the main screen. Pleasingly straightforward. Invaders (Android Wear) Free An unofficial Wear version of the late-70s Japanese arcade classic, Invaders will keep you hooked for hours. All you have to do is tap to move the spaceship and fire in a bid to destroy all aliens before they reach the ground. Your spaceship can take two extra hits before being destroyed and there are hidden modes to be uncovered. Interval Timer Free This fitness app helps you manage your work and rest times, whether you're cycling, running, weight lifting, stretching or boxing. It has a simply, intuitive interface, letting you set repetitions and rest times with ease. You can set hours, minutes and seconds, and pause, resume and reset with a few taps. An essential bit of gym kit. Flashlight for Android Wear Free "OK Google, start Flashlight". And just like that, your Wear watch will glow like the sun itself, helping you guide your key into the front door after a late night or lighting your path to the bathroom at 3am without waking your partner. As one of the 548 five-star reviews says, "Not a lot to say - this app does one thing but it does it well". Android Wear apps 21-30 Wear Fitness Personal Trainer Free A PT on your wrist, this app counts your reps automatically using your watch's motion sensors - so, for example, as you do press ups it'll keep a log of how many - and creates exercise routines based on your fitness level, customised for weight loss, strength, cardio or muscle building which you can follow by watching videos of the routines as performed by a world-renowned personal trainer. Timeish Watch Face £0.80 We're about half way through our list. Time for a silly (but still great) one. If you're not overly fussed about punctuality and like a more relaxed life, then this is the watch face for you. It tells you the time like you'd tell someone else the time, e.g. "getting on for eight", "almost nine", "well past eleven", "dinner" and "twoish". Don't worry, it'll still tell you the exact time too, you big square. Wear Audio Recorder Free Handy for recording conversations, lectures and meetings, as well as any thoughts, song lyrics or poems that your mind may spring on you throughout the day. It's all very simple, just start and stop the recording as you wish and then scroll through a list to revisit previous recordings. You can share, delete and rename them as you see fit, and it also works when the screen is off, for covert missions. Glympse Free Over a million Android users swear by this location-tracking app, which lets you keep in touch with friends and family, helping you safely find and notify of your exact whereabouts. The Android Wear optimisation lets you view any active Glympse simply by swiping, and you can easily send info to social media accounts and to your contacts without touching your phone. WearCalc Free Harking back to the mathematical Casio wristwear of yore, which what many of us would consider our first foray into the world of the 'smartwatch', WearCalc lifts the burden of complex sums and restaurant tip calculations from your phone and gifts the responsibility to your timepiece, complete with a stylish, clean design. Duolingo Free Another of Google's picks for best apps of 2014, Duolingo on Android Wear lets you learn another language on the go, for free. You basically earn achievements by answering linguistic conundrums correctly in fun, bite-size lessons. The Android Wear application keeps it simple, displaying flashcards for you to have a go at when you're, say, on the bus. Take enough bus rides and one day you'll realise you're fluent in French. Advanced Wear Visualizer £1.49 Designed purely for aesthetic fun, this app features 42 different music visualizers that bounce and twist along to your tunes, to mesmerise and celebrate your smartwatch's vibrant screen. Simply swipe left or right to switch the pattern and swipe vertically to increase or decrease the sensitivity. Yes, it's a simple premise, but sometimes they're the best. Try the 8-visualizer free version for size first. Golfshot: Gold GPS Free Placing aerial flyovers, precise yardages and statistics to more than 40,000 golf courses onto your wrist, it's no wonder that golfers around the world rely on Golfshot to improve their handicap. Android Wear support means you don't have to hold your phone while you take your swing, something we find improved our game immeasurably. PixtoCam £1.20 This apps lets you view and control front and rear cameras from your watch to take snaps and videos, regardless of whether your phone is on or off. Just voice command "start viewfinder" to launch, double tap to zoom and easily set flash, light torch or activate the self-timer. It's also "Spy Ready", so no shutter sound or phone notifications when in use. Runtastic Pro £4.99 A clearly laid-out, easy to read running app for joggers who don't like fiddling with their phone but who also don't like the complication that some dedicated running watches present. Features include one-tap operation, start and stop with voice commands and easily viewable time, distance and calorie stats. Over 40 million registered users are ready to be out-healthed by you. Android Wear apps 31-40 Find My Phone Free Just because you may not always need your phone these days, you still want it nearby at all times. Stray too far from it and, thanks to this app, your Wear watch will start buzzing. Tap "tap to find!" and, even when on silent, your phone will launch into the alarm and visual signals you've set it up with, leading you quickly back into its metallic, cold embrace. Android Wear 2048 Free One of the most popular Android apps of last year, the Android Wear version brings a simpler 4x4 square interface to this highly addictive puzzler. Swipe to move the tiles; when two tiles with the same number touch, they merge into one. The aim is to get higher sums and when a 2048 tile is created, the game is won. Double tap to display your current score. Android Wear apps 30-40 Wear Tip Calculator Free If you're exacting enough to want to work out the precise 12.5% of your bill, but polite enough not to want to go waving your phone around the table, the Wear Tip Calculator offers a discreet alternative. Just type in your bill, then the tip percentage, et voila, the total amount you need to pay. And everyone thought you were just checking the time. InstaWeather for Android Wear Free Choose from multiple attractive weather faces, satellite view (visible and infrared) and have 24-hour forecasts a wrist lift away. Receive notifications if a shower's heading your way, with distance details included. There's also the option to run in low power mode so your obsession with meteorology doesn't drain your battery. Google Fit Free If you want to become generally a bit more active without having to wear a secondary tracker or fitness band, Google Fit - now compatible with all Android Wear devices, as you'd expect - can provide just the motivation you need. Set daily goals for over 100 activities and control them from your watch. It'll connect to third-party apps to keep all your data in one place. Task Manager for Android Wear Free It's easy to lose track of what's running on a relatively small screen. Task Manager cleanly lists all programmes and processes running on your watch, helping you stop tasks easily and quickly, saving you potentially hours of battery life. Just say "Start Task Manager"and take it from there. You can even close all opened tabs with one tap of the "Close all" button. TetroCrate Free An addictive falling bricks game, TetroCrate (sounds familiar…) challenges you to drag blocks around, spin them and land them to fill spaces without leaving gaps. Guess what happens when you create a gap-free line? Yep, bye bye line, hello points. A old-school concept for a cutting edge device, and - partly because it's attached to our arm - we can't put it down. Attopedia Free Simple games, clever watch faces, a simple weather app… all sound like the sort of thing smartwatches are designed for, but the idea of using wristwear to browse Wikipedia seems bananas. That is until you try Attopedia, which manages to take one of the most text-heavy websites going and make it easy to navigate on a tiny screen. Great for cheating at quizzes, too. Calculator for Android Wear Free The first and best calculator app for Android Wear received an update in March, making it slicker than ever. Carry out simple calculations on the go, or switch to scientific functions to go all Beautiful Mind with trigonometric functions, logarithmic functions, exponential functions, modulo operation, constants pi and e and square root function. Flopsy Droid Free Billed on Google Play as "an experimental game inspired by a certain other Bird-based game", the graphical style and aim of this side-scrolling title will probably ring some bells (hint: it's Flappy Bird). Fine tuned for Android Wear devices, you must navigate a floppily limbed droid through a series of pipes to rack up the points. So long, social life, we hardly knew ye.

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