Windows 8 Smartphone: 5 Apps to Enhance User Experience

After purchasing a Smartphone enabled with Windows latest version (8) one may go on looking for appropriate apps for it. However, one may wonder about its app compatibility but the most interesting aspect about Windows 8 phone is its app compatibility with the older version of Windows (7.5). This makes it easier to find apps that suit your needs. Listed in this article are 5 such apps that will help enhance your experience with your Windows 8 Smartphone. Let us have a look at these apps one by one and understand how these apps are useful.

Super Camera

Ever wondered about an app that will easily help you improve pictures with one touch, if so then download Super Camera. This app enables you in improving pictures with one-touch. You can easily add frames, enhance picture quality, apply effects and other such features to make your picture better. Additionally, while you are still using this application you can simultaneously capture a picture and even animate a photograph. Other things include editing pictures and enhancing the color contrast, giving brightening effects and other such improvements to make the picture appear better. With this app you need not get into sub menus for performing functions but the options are available on the easy to access tray for user convenience. Additionally, you can even add text to the picture without compromising the picture quality.

Connectivity shortcuts

You must be aware of the default functionality of lifetime UI in your Windows 8 OS. This feature is all about navigation through menus and pinning apps on start menu for a quick access. Nonetheless, even a pre-loaded feature like this may fail to include a few things like pinning options from a menu to home screen. Options like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, flight mode are just a few to name that any user would want to access quickly. Download an app called Connectivity Shortcuts. As the name suggests, this app is capable of creating a quick access to these programs on the home screen. Additionally, you can customize and pin other program options that are present in the sub menu to be pinned directly on start menu. Go to the option > Select > Pin to start menu, it is as simple as this. After you have pinned these options or shortcuts to these apps the icons for these programs will appear as tiles, this helps avoid clutter.

Bing Maps

The most used functionalities that a user wants are mapping and navigation. You need a reliable mapping system like Bing Maps. This is seemingly the best available application for travel and mapping. Bing has all the features incorporated for a good mapping system that Google maps contain. Additionally, Bing Maps are free of charge service and it allows a user to pin and sync on Dropbox. You can utilize it whenever you want. You will have the advantage of searching places, seeking directions and satellite image of places. Therefore, this pre-loaded app in your Windows 8 system is a boon to travelers and for those who are often out looking for directions for a specific area. Got to Bing Maps > Enter specific area > get directions.

Whatsapp

There are various chat apps available with cross platform functionality but the best option is Whatsapp. This chat messenger is truly a cross platform based chat service that is supportive of BlackBerry, iOS, Android and Windows. A user can share text based chat, audio/video files and pictures with users across your chat network. After downloading this chat a user needs to register with the phone number that acts as the ID and start chatting. However, you must remember that although this chat service is free of cost you still will need to pay for the data charges as it connects through internet. Interestingly, as soon as you download this app on your phone, this app will identify the contacts that are using this app and the friends who are already connected via Whatsapp. This way you need not specifically add friends for chat. Just go to Whatsapp > Contact > Chat and start chatting.

Appdeals

When you are in search of various applications you might also be on a look out for the best deals available. This also includes looking for apps that are available across other platforms and are compatible to your device as well. Download Appdeals, this will help you look for 1, 20,000 apps. You get the best deal with the latest offers on apps. All you need to do is install Appdeal on your Smartphone and get started with it by following the automitacially-guided steps, remember to follow the terms & conditions laid by the app developers for full utilization of this app. When you are done installing this app you will start receiving message alerts or notifications about the latest app deals.

Get AOL Support and Services

AOL is today a brand name that is recognized worldwide for its wide range of services that it offers to all. Since making its debut in 1983 the company has seen several changes in its management as well as its brand name. It had started with the name "Control Video Corporation", or CVC, and had its only product was online gaming service for a particular game console, which offered a number of games available to its customers for download at $1 per game, though only one game was available to be played at one time. To play a game that a person had played earlier, it needed to be purchased again.

In 1985, the company was renamed to "Quantum Computer Services", and came under an all new management. In 1988, Apple and Quantum launched a joint product, but by 1989, they parted ways. It was then that Quantum computer adopted their then name "America Online", or simply AOL. Then again in the year 2006, the abbreviation AOL, LLC was made the official name of the brand, thus dropping its original full name.

The company presently offers its services in:

• Content 

• Membership 

• Advertising 

• Local 

• AOL Ventures and more...

In each of these modules, there are numerous other sub-divisions that the company caters to, and all of these are widely regarded as premium services, having also won accolades for their effectiveness too. Besides, the company offers an email account, instant messenger (AIM), mobile application and also other online services such as lifestore.com and About.me.

Any of these modules could get an error at some stage while working on them, and at such a time, you mostly would turn to AOL Support to have it resolved. AOL Tech Support specialists usually are already familiar with most of such errors and thus you always get to have appropriate solutions for these from them. Usually most of the issues are not critical, and you could get to have your issue's resolution at no cost at all! Few of them are paid too, but these charges too are always nominal, and are charged to your account only after you get satisfied with the result.

A number of third party companies also offer such support services, and many of them charge you a lesser amount that you would otherwise pay to the company for same kind of service. Whether it is some issue related to any of the services such as emails, news, entertainment, technology, travel, pets, health, video games or more, you can always make use of AOL Technical Support and have its resolution. It is such services of this leading brand that make it a class apart from all the rest. Once you enter their world, you would always want to be a part of it. Just give their website a visit and you will understand what I really mean!

The author is a technical support officer at Tech Support Mart with years of experience in providing AOL Support. Apart from AOL Technical Support, he's also well versed with other forms of tech support such as Hotmail Support, etc.

Small Business CRM Tips: Top 5 Reasons Why You Need a Customer Relationship Management Tool

If you're an entrepreneur, you most likely have a solution or two in place to manage data about your clients, partners and prospects. At first, you may perhaps be fine with simply compiling business cards of your customers in a card holder on saving their contact information on your mobile phone. However, you'll soon realize that you need a more systematic means of storing/accessing data. That's the time you should consider getting a small business CRM tool. Here are top five reasons why you need one:

1. To find, attract and get new customers - A customer relationship management tool can facilitate in coming up with highly-targeted, relevant campaigns using the most preferred communication channels to obtain new customers. A CRM system will also help you monitor, evaluate and determine which marketing campaigns or promotions are working and not. With loads of information you can gather, you'll also be able to understand how to best use your marketing budget.

2. To cultivate and maintain current customers - Many entrepreneurs are already aware that it costs more to acquire a new customer than maintain a current customer. Using a small business CRM, you'll have all the required tools/features to help you cultivate and keep existing customers. Example: Ability to know and understand what your audience needs or wants, and how to accomplish them.

3. To attract past customers - Losing a customer to your competition is tough for any entrepreneur. But with the right CRM system, you can find out the reason/s they left and then concentrate on fulfilling their needs. As a result, you can then easily determine the ideal marketing avenues to lure previous customers back to your business.

4. To lessen customer service cost - Using a small business CRM, entrepreneurs can offer online customer support and technical assistance to better serve their customer base. This will then transform to improved customer satisfaction and reduced costs related to servicing customers.

5. To improve overall productivity - In the long run, companies that utilize a CRM tool will prove to be much more productive and proficient in deploying their products/services than those that do not. CRMs offer better customer relationships, which is synonymous to greater yield and ROI.

Bizness CRM is "selling to small businesses made easy." Bizness CRM is simple to use, free to try, and the only CRM built for companies targeting small businesses.

Simple Interrow Computation: Keep It Simple!

The interrow computation is quite common, such as the aggregate, comparison with same period of any previous year, and link relative ratio in business statistics and analytics. Both R language and esProc provide a pretty good interrow computation ability with slight difference to each other. In the case below, the utilization of some basic inter-row computations is demonstrated to expound the differences between the two methods:

Since Christmas is coming, and the sales department of a company wants to make statistics on the outstanding sales persons after the Christmas big promotion, for example, the salesman who achieves half of the total sales amount of the company. The data are mainly from the order of table database: salesOrder. The main fields include the ID of order: ordered, Name of sales person: name, Sales amount: sales, and date of order: salesDate.

The straightforward solution is shown as below:

1. Group by sales person to calculate the sales amount of each sales person.

2. Sort by sales amount in reverse order on the basis of the data from the previous step.

3. According to the previous step, calculate the aggregate value of each record, and calculate the standard of comparison: the half of total sales of this company.

4. Of the aggregate values calculated in the previous step, select out the list of sales persons whose sales achievement meeting the below conditions: lower or equal to the standard of comparison; or although higher than the standard of comparison, the sales achievement of previous sales person is lower than the standard of comparison.

The detailed solution of R is shown as below:

01 library(RODBC)

02 odbcDataSources()

03 conn<-odbcConnect("sqlsvr")

04 originalData<-sqlQuery(conn,'select * from salesOrder')

05 odbcClose(conn)

06 nameSum<-gNameMonth<-aggregate(originalData$sales,list(originalData$name),sum)

07 names(nameSum)<-c('name','salesSum')

08 orderData<-nameSum[rev(order(nameSum$salesSum)),]

09 halfSum<-sum(orderData$salesSum)/2

10 orderData$addup<-cumsum(orderData$salesSum)

11 subset(orderData,addup<=halfSum | (addup>halfSum & c( 0, addup[- length (addup)]) Please find the detailed solution of esProc ( download ) below:))

A B

$select * from salesOrder

=A1.group(name;name,~.sum(sales):salesSum)

=A2.sort@0(salesSum:-1) =A2.sum(salesSum)/2

=A3.derive(A3.(salesSum).cumulate()(#):addup)

=A4.select(addup<=B3 || (addup>=B3 && addup[-1]<b3)) Then, let us study on the differences between aggregate values:

The R uses cumsum to calculate the aggregate value in the line 10.

esProc uses cumulate in A4 to calculate the aggregate value.

Both writing styles are very convenient for users. However, the operation principle of esProc is aimed to each record: firstly, calculate the cumulate, then, get the aggregate value corresponding to this record according to the # row number. By comparison, R enjoys a higher efficiency than esProc on this respect since the calculation will be executed only once.

Dividing one statement of esProc into two statements can solve the efficiency issue, that is, firstly, calculate the list of aggregate value separately, and then insert it to the original dataset. However, such writing style is not as concise as the R that only requires one line of code.

Then, let us check the qualified sales person and the differences:

R completes the computation at the Line 11, mainly by moving the line, and using c( 0, addup[- length (addup)]) to construct a column for the new data. Compared with the column addup, the new column just moves down one column, and the last entry of data is removed and filled with 0 of the first entry. Then, you can compare whether the aggregate value is lower than the standard of comparison, or although it is higher than the standard of comparison, its previous record is lower than the standard.

R does not provide the ability to access the data at the relative position. Therefore, the method of "move the data in the relative position to the current position" is adopted. Though the result is still the same, the style of writing is not intuitive enough, and it requires the analyst a relatively higher ability in logic thinking.

The writing style of esProc is select(addup<=B3 || (addup>B3 && addup[-1]

Unlike the fixed algorithm of aggregate value, the algorithm of this step is relatively much freer. You may find that the style of expression regarding the relative position of esProc is very agile with great advantages.

Compared with the fixed algorithms, this step of algorithm is much freer.

As we can see from the above case, the computations of relative position and interrow computations can solve many problems which are apparently complex. esProc is more flexible in expressing the relative positions. Therefore, esProc users can feel more relax when calculating the complex problems.

Regarding the R language, appending to the whole column/row and the fixed algorithm are relative more concise and very impressive.

For industries like marketing and sales, healthcare and pharmaceutical, educational, financial and telecommunication, statisticsl computing tools like R or esProc are usually helpful to ease working strength and improve efficiency.

The Power of Interactive Learning That Can Change the World

A form of knowledge enhancement that is commonly used on the Internet is known as collaborative learning. One individual can team up with another and share information and skills, so that both can learn from each other through forums, discussion boards and chats. This is an important part of learning, as teamwork is also based on the same principle.

When ideas are shared, each individual contributes in his or her own unique way. The outcomes of the discussion can be evaluated through a learning management software, and accordingly feedback can be provided to the learner. If this feedback is given to a large number of individuals who interact through the online medium, this is known as social learning. This provides different perspectives towards a common problem, that helps to broaden the spectrum of thinking.

Through the exchange of various views and ideas, individuals learn different approaches to handling a particular work situation, and this acts as a confidence booster for them. Learning is a never-ending process, and this can be clearly seen when e-learning solutions are used. However, care must be taken to purchase these solutions from an experienced vendor, so that glitches do not appear during installation.

An e-learning solution can also be integrated with a social media platform, such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, and it can be used by the users to communicate with each other in real time. This way, no data has to be downloaded on computer systems or mobile phones, and information can be provided directly over the Internet. This can be considered as a form of interactive learning. Additionally, this also makes the whole process of knowledge enhancement into a fun and engaging process.

Outsourcing training requirements to a recognized e-learning company is very cost-effective for any business. The various e-learning companies have many trained individuals who are already working to develop solutions. These solutions can also be easily upgraded from time to time, to include new databases of knowledge.

There are many individuals who get together in order to create a particular training module. This includes instructional designers, subject matter experts and translators, to name a few. The product is also developed based on the mode of delivery (computer based, web based, instructor training).

Today, a new form of knowledge enhancement known as game-based learning, has also been included. Through various educational games, different real world strategies can be understood by employees. This is also another form of interactive learning, where individuals compete against each other.

Source Code Reverse Engineering - A Boon or a Bane

The concept of reverse engineering or retrieving the original source code back started as early as writing the source code itself. This was initially invented to regain the source code when the original code is lost in instances such as a disk crash, virus attack, theft or destruction due to natural causes. Once the source code is compiled in to a byte code for the machine it is intended to, the source code is not needed anymore as it is the byte code that goes along with the machine. Storage of the source code is as important as having the byte code since this will be required to regenerate the byte code any time when the machine crashes. With storage options abound, today there is no need to worry about storing these valuable codes. In the time when the options were limited there was a need for a handy decompiler all the time to avoid having to rework on the code during such crashes. And that's when this software was a boon.

Times have changed since then and there is always someone who needs access to the original piece of code to enhance or extend the functionality for a new device or with more advanced features. For someone who has access to the original source code that person/company can market this enhanced piece as a competitor for the original software itself. This is called copy right infringement and is penalized in a court of law. Such an infringement throws up a challenge for the original vendor to prove the pirated software was indeed a derivation from the original software which they claim ownership to. The hunter has become the hunted now. Now software copyright owners trying to plug such loopholes by means of software called the 'obfuscators' that helps mask the source code and not reveal simple data variables like the strings to complex flow patterns and conditional statements.

To the developer, it just means that writing and generating the code on this software rather than on the interface that was used for writing initially. These obfuscators are developed for specific languages and have all the dependent run time engines for compiling the code. Sometimes, they come in the form of 'plugins' which when plugged in to the current code interface does the job of code obfuscation while the underlying run time engines takes care of the compilation part. This solution has proved more successful and is being shipped along the studio interfaces where the original vendor and the obfuscation owner have a sale agreement going with the package. As languages evolve to address needs of the ever-growing demands from customers, so have the obfuscators to help stop code plagiarism thereby, helping the original developers thrive.

ERP System And CRM Software - What Can They Do For Your Business?

A lot of business people are having a hard time boosting up the operation of their business. It can be because of improper implementation of the business system which leads to a lower business productivity. An ERP system and CRM software can streamline your business organization and maximize productivity.

Just what is the ERP system and what is CRM software? CRM and ERP are systems that are similar in many ways, however, they are used for different purposes. Simply put, CRM is used to manage sales and customers, while ERP is used to manage staffing information and employee productivity.

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning and it is a system that helps manage the operational needs of a particular company, be it a small or large business enterprise. In actuality, the system uses a kind of software that may help organize the overall production of a business. This means that the ERP system will provide an automated system to facilitate different business functions such as measurement of product distribution, finances, management of product inventory, product sales, human resources, marketing, planning, manufacturing and other business operations.

An effectively implemented ERP system will organize and address departmental data accordingly. This, in turn, will connect the workflow of each department efficiently so that accurate information is passed to each component of the business. Overall, the business management software system is able to track, plan and organize your business the productive way.

CRM or Customer Relations Management software is typically integrated into a business to manage interactions with clients, partners and sales prospects. The software is able to provide your business the best strategies on how your business can be visible in the market (locally and even globally). Also, you are able to get relevant information on how you can collaborate with other companies for a high chance of business success.

The proper implementation of CRM software into an enterprise will allow the business to view the activities and progress of the operations. Because the operations are tracked, any area that needs to be improved can easily be located and addressed. This system will also help forecast revenues. Marketing and sales functions can also be automated such as email and promotional campaigns.

Now, the software is usually given to the IT (information technology) department. A solid IT team is valuable to a business, since special skills and expertise is necessary to properly implement systems to make them work efficiently. This means that they have the task of using the software to produce better business results. Some systems allow social media integration which can increase client interaction.

Implementing ERP and CRM systems for your business is indeed a great idea since it will provide better management for your business. So to upgrade the system in your company, you can surely consider having the software system to enhance the productivity and organization of your business. With this kind of business methodology, you are ensured in getting ahead of your business competitors.