Google Launches Public Beta of Web Designer - A Free Design Tool

Google recently launched a new advertising application in beta called Google Web Designer. The company says the tool is for creating “professional-quality design” HTML5 ads and campaigns accessible to everyone from the designer to the dabbler.

HTML5 is widely seen as the standard that everyone on the Web should adopt. In case you didn’t know, Google describes HTML5 as a “universal language for building beautiful, engaging content that can run across desktops, smartphones, and tablets.” It is thus the company’s hope that Google Web Designer will help make HTML5 accessible to people throughout the advertising industry, getting Web developers closer to the goal of “build once, run anywhere.”

Here’s the current feature list for Google Web Designer beta:

Create animated HTML5 creative, with a robust, yet intuitive set of design tools.

View and edit the code behind your designs and see your edits reflected back on the stage automatically.

Build ad creatives seamlessly for DoubleClick and AdMob, or publish them to any generic environment you choose.
Receive updates to the product automatically, without having to re-download the application.

Access all of this entirely for free.

If you prefer the visual version, Google has provided multiple YouTube videos to show off the tool. Here’s one of them:

If this piques your interest you should read the getting started guide. Google is also asking for feedback, which you can provide on its user forum and Google+ page.

Again, this is just a beta, although Google does use the tag with little regard for its meaning. That being said, the company says it is “working hard over the next couple quarters to add new features and improvements.” We’ll let you know when its stable release is available.

CEO Meg Whitman’s Turnaround Plan For HP

The chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co., Meg Whitman today announced to raise its earnings outlook for 2013 to boost its personal computer sales with the aid of enterprise computing services. As the recent quarterly results reflected the dwindling computers sales, the company raised its earnings outlook based on the turnaround plan provided by Whitman. The shares for HP gained a 14 percent hike after it projected its full-year earnings per share. The company also projected the fiscal third-quarter profit to top the analysts’ estimates.

Meg Whitman aims to recapture the former growth of the world’s largest PC maker and hopes to increase its shrinking personal computer sales figures. The company has already received a positive response from its investors. As stated by Cathie Lesjak, the chief financial officer of HP, the investments are another great deposit in their venture to make the turnaround successful. She added that the printing units and enterprise services are a bit ahead in the competition, which has further helped the company to improve its gross margin during the quarter.

Earlier, the company reported that revenues had significantly fallen, with a major decline in the personal computers segment. The sales figure from the company’s leading PC focused business unit had fallen by 20 percent to $7.58 billion. As a result, the company is focusing on massive cost cutting, pushing for layoffs and writing off its EDS services business. The company is also striving to expand its business into areas that have long-term potential such as enterprise computing services.

A year earlier, the net income of HP had dipped to $1.08 billion from $1.59 billion. However, by the second quarter, the company had steadied itself to an operating revenue of $27.6 billion. For its fiscal third quarter, it is estimated that the company’s non-GAAP earnings per share would rise from 84 cents to 87 cents, a bit higher than 83 cents that was projected by Wall Street analysts. As investors gradually earned back the confidence on HP, the share prices also rose to 51 percent in 2013.

TELUS Launches its Largest 4G LTE Wireless Network in Saint John

TELUS, the leading provider of national telecommunications services in Canada, recently announced that it is expanding its services on the country’s largest 4G LTE network to reach the customers in Saint John. With this launch, Saint John becomes the home to the leading and fastest wireless technology solution in the world. The expansion of the company’s 4G Long Term Evolution will enable the consumers of Atlantic Canada to experience remarkably faster downloads while surfing the internet, downloading the chart-topping music or videos, or reading emails. This is expected to enhance Saint John’s experience of high-speed wireless technology.

With this new launch of its 4G LTE technology in Saint John, TELUS now holds almost 70 percent of the total population in Canada. Of late, the company has successfully launched and marketed its advanced 4G LTE network in other important Atlantic regions such as Charlottetown, St. John’s, Halifax, and Moncton. Customers can seamlessly download TELUS Network Experience (TNE) application through app stores for free on advanced 4G devices that include iPhone, Blackberry, and Android. TNE will also be available for Blackberry Z10 devices in the months to follow, reported TELUS.

Of late, 4G LTE is fast emerging as the international standard in wireless technology industry, with latest advanced devices being specifically built to benefit from its incredible speed. The customers of TELUS can experience comprehensive capabilities of its 4G LTE network on most popular devices such as Samsung Galaxy S III, Blackberry Z10, Samsung Rugby LTE, Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 LTE, HTC One X+, LG Optimus G, Samsung ATIV S, and the Huawei E397 4G LTE Mobile Internet Key.

The TELUS 4G LTE network efficiently supports peak download speed of up to 75 megabits per seconds, with an average of 12 to 25 Mbps. This means that a 600MB video will take only three to seven minutes to download on 4G LTE-capable device. When the customer of TELUS travels outside the coverage areas of 4G LTE network, they will automatically move to the existing 4G HSPA network with no service disruptions. 4G LTE is the latest innovation in TELUS’ wireless network technology portfolio, which was made possible by the launch f coast-to-coast 4G HSPA wireless network service. Today, it has a reach of more than 97 percent of total Canadian population. Ever since 2000, the company has invested $30 billion to deliver the world’s most advanced wireless networks to the Canadians.

As remarked by Ken Power, director of sales, TELUS, more than 24 million Canadian consumers in thriving communities such as Saint John are now covered by the world’s fastest 4G LTE wireless network. To enhance their wireless experience, the company also launched TELUS Network Experience application that will provide an easier way to the customers to instantly report any network issues right from the mobile device.

TELUS the leading provider of national telecommunications services in Canada and the largest provider of world’s fastest 4G LTE wireless technology network. The products and services of TELUS include wireless, Internet Protocol, voice, data, entertainment, television, and video.

What are the Dangers of Cloud Computing

Every day more businesses are moving on to cloud computing from the desktop and have begun to depend on web hosted applications like Facebook, Google Docs and Flickr to store and access their email, documents and photos. Microsoft has further confirmed in a global SMB Cloud Application Study done in 2011, that within the next three years over 49% of the small businesses would be signing up for at least one cloud service.

In today’s world, where users manage multiple devices and computers, it definitely makes sense to move your documents, photos, notes and email to a web application. However, there are serious implications while transferring your personal data to the web app. There are many risks and pitfalls that your personal data could get lost in all this cloud-centric hype products and most of the risks present in the cloud frontier are oblivious to most people.

First of all, people should be aware of the fact that the internet is not the cloud and any software app or storage facility located anywhere on the Internet is not being a part of the cloud. Who would want his or her business to be looked after by someone, somewhere with a server placed in his bedroom?

Despite the fact that cloud servers can be a big money saver and comes with signification cost savings, one must keep in mind the security concerns while evaluating cloud servers. It might be future of IT, and a lot many people support the cloud concept but mentioned below are the imminent dangers of cloud computing that need to be looked into before signing up.

In a true cloud-computing world, a network of servers that are located in different parts of the world and are interconnected handles the data storage and software. A good cloud-computing firm offers data that is well managed in a significantly low cost environment and most of all secure and scalable. However, as not all cloud-computing firms are the same, it pays to do a bit of homework.

1. Are you aware of your cloud’s location?

There are many unreliable cloud-computing firms who have their servers located in a single data center. They market themselves as cloud-based services, but do not highlight the fact that they only have a single data center and which may not be reliable and legitimate. However, it may be cheaper, but this is a risk you cannot afford.

2. Does the cloud-based application have scalability?

By just being in a cloud environment does not ensure scalability for large amounts of traffic and data storage and huge volumes of users when your app grows in popularity. It should ensure scalability and this would depend on how the system was built. Look for negative comments in a forum or search Google and other search engines for comments about the cloud app, before you place too much trust in them.

3. Will this cloud –based software evolve?

This depends on the resources of the service provider as software development and upgradation is never too simple. It is time consuming and complex and if you back the wrong company, you’ll soon find the need to switch companies.

4. Is it easy to change service providers?

Although you may be able to cancel the service at any time, the key remains in getting your data back in a perfect format as many companies have lost their data after terminating the services of the service provider.

5 Is it really secure?

Good cloud computing services have dedicated and skilled resources that maintain a high level of security. However, not many have this and many of the smaller companies are to be checked prior to signing up

6 Check about the backups

Also enquire about your data back-up plan in case of an emergency and also find about the time and cost it would take to restore it.

You’ve probably agreed to a whole bunch of terms when you signed up, but if you haven’t read the fine print, then it just might be too bad, so sad. Don’t get this wrong as most of us have entrusted our data with the likes of Google, Apple, Amazon, and Yahoo. The key is to know what you're getting into when you make that choice so that you can strengthen your security mechanisms.

Tips to Create A Mobile Compatible Blog

It is projected that the mobile web will overtake the desktop web by 2014. In other words, by 2014, people will be using the mobile platform to access the web rather than a laptop or desktop. Millions of people over the people may still have no electricity but they will still be having access to the mobile web.

If we have to talk figures then just make note that the mobile traffic in 2011 was over 8 times more than the global Internet traffic during the year 2000. For the first time, over 50 percent of the traffic came from mobile video traffic in the year 2011. It is projected that by end 2012, the number of mobile devices ought to exceed the world’s population. Furthermore, it is projected that there would be round 10 billion devices by 2016. In other words, close to 1.4 mobile devices per capita exceeding the projected global population of 7.3 billion.

Having said that, over 6% of the visits to your blog are through mobile devices. Hence, unlike the people who accessed through laptops and desktops, the first time mobile and tablet users, will be linked irrespective of their location. In other words, people share content when it is happening.

Have a clean and simple blog that is easy to navigate. You must remember that mobile users use only a tiny screen and there is no presence of a mouse. Besides, not all mobile devices have the touch screen facility. So clean up the clutter and remember to use images only sparingly as images cause issues with the blog design. It may be alright if you are using a laptop but for a mobile platform, they generally appear messy and increase the amount of time while loading. However, if you must use images, then compress them. Basically, cut back on image and keep it simple and user friendly.

If you have a blogspot blog, then you must make your blogs more mobile friendly as over 15% of the users now use mobile phones, tablets and iPhones. So it is important to make your blog mobile compatible. Mentioned below is a method on how to make your blog mobile compatible. Please remember to back-up your blogger template before making any changes to your template. First, log in to your blogger dashboard and navigate setting to Email & Mobile. Then select “Yes” on the show mobile template option on mobile devices and then choose the mobile template from the options given there. Save your setting and you are done.

Just remember that optimizing your blog for the mobile platform could be one of the best moves that you have done to make your blog reader friendly and successful. Although this may mean that you may have to spend some time to install some plugins, the end result would be amazing.

Finally, the most successful blogs out there are the ones that are unique and can be navigated and read easily by both the mobile and the computer devices.