While one side of the Enterprise was totally obsessed with buttons this week, the other side got a hot peek at some up and coming Apple goodness, more Yammer perks and a set of handy tools newly available to the iPad and iPhone.
Apple Confirms iCloud, But What Exactly Is It?
Rumors about Apple's impending cloud service were confirmed in a pre-announcement earlier this week. Dubbed iCloud, the exact purpose of the new platform — to be officially unwrapped on Monday, June 6th — isn't totally clear, but CEO Steve Jobs hasn't left us without a few good hints.
Apple's recent deals with Warner, EMI and Sony signal a new music service is on its way. Imagine a platform that could mirror your entire iTunes collection online and make it available to stream to any device.
Second, Apple phasing out MobileMe retail boxes and taking online subscriptions only has lead many to speculate that the company is getting ready to reconstruct the way it handles file storage, e-mail and device tracking overall.
It's also notable that Apple is choosing to announce iCloud at its developer conference. If iCloud turns out to be baked into iOS 5, maybe it will be even more than what we've guessed at.
Yammer Adds Badges & In-line Video to Enterprise Platform
Yammer (news, site) added two notable features to its business communication platform this week: in-line videos within news feeds and recognition badges.
Praise is a new application that allows users to reward colleagues with badges. These badges can be given out as congratulations for a specific achievement or just for being great. Users will be able to see all the badges they and their colleagues have collected over time via a recognition tab.
Meanwhile, if a Yammer user attaches a video to a message, that video can now be played directly within the feed. Like Facebook, users can then comment on and like the video if they see fit. Users can also browse all uploaded videos that have been added to a company’s stream and search for videos by keyword:
Learning Opportunities
Webinar
Mar
29
The CX Commute vs. the CX Joy Ride
Is your CX traffic holding up your customer's journey?
Webinar
Mar
29
Is Your Microsoft 365 Data Recoverable? How to Survive the IT Hotseat When Data is Lost
See why MIcrosoft recommends third party backup
Webinar
Mar
30
An Optimized Customer Contact Strategy Combines Transparency and Intelligence: The State of Outbound Communications
Learn from the Neustar-commissioned Forrester Consulting study on challenges and solutions for contact centers
Webinar
Apr
5
Adopt a Modern Digital-First Marketing Strategy
Learn how to use a composable DXP to your advantage
VMWare Grabs Socialcast to Expand its SaaS Offering
VMware's (news, site) latest purchase of Socialcast adds another line of differentation, offering SaaS-based enterprise social networking and collaboration, everything the enterprise 2.0-era organization needs to get ahead.
VMware's vision is to move with users away from the old PC desktop concept to a more mobile workforce used to working on multiple devices with data stored in the cloud, and used to using social networking in the business environment.
These new collaboration systems can help users work better together, remain in the loop wherever they are and access documents on the go and contribute to their betterment.
Mindjet Releases Visual Mapping for iPad, iPhone and MindManager 9 for the Mac
This week, Mindjet (news, site) made MindManager 9 available for the Mac as well as the iPad and iPhone.
Nifty features include:
- A quick entry feature to allow you to get a list of items down quickly and then select each one to build further detail.
- The ability to organize information better by prioritizing and adding link resources — similar to how it's done in the Windows version.
- Improvements to communication including a slide creation mode and the ability to create a slideshow to collect feedback and easily share ideas/information. According to Mindjet's Blaine Mathieu, Chief Products Officer, this was the number one requested feature from Mac users.
- Compatibility with FreeMind, a free mind mapping Mac tool allows users to easily upgrade to MindManager 9.
