Why Build Your Travel App?

Posted on March 23, 2023 by schatzi

Nowadays people become more and more sophisticated in their choice of places to go traveling and even more – they become tech-savvy and hungry for relevant and well presented information. This demand thus touches traveling industry, requiring from its best players wide choice, reasonable prices and comfortable conditions. Modern travelers want to use modern services, try modern technologies which enrich their traveling experience. Did you consider going mobile already? Do you have a mobile version of your travel-services site? And finally, have you built at least one mobile app to present your services, destinations you work on or a simple traveling tips based app? I encourage you to improve and that is why:

Mobile can provide up-to-date travel information about directions you work on

Provide your clients with guidance, tips and advice about the place they are coming to, warn or encourage. It will help them not to get lost in foreign eco-system and feel as safe as possible.

Mobile can enhance travelers’ desire to go your direction and explore it independently

Give your customers more comprehensive information on the routes, venues and opportunities on the direction of their choice. Let them feel independent and well informed of the do’s and don’ts. That will push them to explore the place and obtain unique travel experience.

Mobile can make traveling greener

Travelers often use various paper travel guides, maps, phrasebooks and advisors to easily surf unknown surroundings and communicate with the natives. Collect everything they need into one mobile app and reduce the need for paper mediums thus saving forest resources. As well, it will simplify the process of information search which is another advantage of digital solution over paper source.

Mobile adds buzz

All apps done these days are well designed for sharing. It makes it easy for travelers to share pictures, videos or let friends know their location and surroundings, provided you included sharing feature to the app. A smart traveling app is worth sharing, worth sending a link about or showing to a fellow traveler.

I can’t avoid mentioning social media integration possibilities with various networking resources like Foursquare and the such – great places for spreading a word out.

Mobile can be a powerful brand promotion tool

If your app performs well, meets people’s needs and pleases them, these positive emotions become strongly associated with your brand. All this strengthen a loyal following and build a positive brand reputation.

Mobile can extend travel experience

A beautiful, smart and informative application will not be used just once. Users will address to it to check and recall some info, admire photos and videos if present or check their travel notes again.

Mobile is measurable

It’s quite easy to integrate analytics tools to track and measure your app effectiveness. You will always know was your app helpful, how much it was used and how many people got acquainted with your brand.

How do you start and take advantage of benefits of going mobile?

Firstly, think of what will benefit your clients the most, of their needs, wants and desires.

Secondly, make sure you fill the app with most accurate information and user friendly design. Remember that good app will bring you success, but a bad app may do harm.

And to crown it all – be innovative and give your customers an opportunity to obtain a unique travel experience, and they will return a hundredfold.

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HTC Aria – A Compact Android Phone Available on AT&T

Posted on March 22, 2023 by schatzi

HTC Aria is one of the best Android phones available on USA’s largest GSM operator AT&T. The handset design is quite similar to HTC’s another popular model – HD Mini. The Aria measures 103.8 in height, 57.7 mm in width and 11.7 mm thick and weighs 115 grams. It is not as big as some of the other high-end smartphones in the market but it is quite compact and easy to hold and carry.

HTC Aria offers a 3.2 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen which supports a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. The display is quite sharp, bright and crisp and supports upto 256K colors. Another interesting feature is the Pinch to Zoom which allows the user to easily magnify the screen incase the text is too difficult to read. Like all the other HTC handset, this one also features the HTC Sense user interface. There are seven homescreens which can be customized by the user by adding widgets and shortcuts to apps and websites.

HTC Aria runs on Google’s Android operating system so it is not surprising that it is preloaded with Gmail, Google Talk, Google Maps, YouTube and Quickoffice. Other applications offered include Twitter, Peep, AT&T Radio, Yellow Pages, AT&T Navigator, AT&T Family Map, MobiTV. Some of these apps are offered as trial versions. Users can also install apps available at the Android Market.

Like most Android phones, this handset also offers WebKit HTML browser which does a great job at accessing websites in high definition. As mentioned earlier, the phone comes with a preloaded YouTube app which allows you to access videos directly on the phone. The inbuilt music player supports most file formats like MP3/AAC+/WAV and a video player supports MP4 and 3GP files. Users can also listen to FM Radio.A 3.5 mm audio jack allows users to plug in their favorite headsets.

HTC Aria has a 5 megapixel camera which does a very good job at shooting photos and videos. Images up to a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels can be shot. Some nice features like autofocus, geo-tagging, face detection, brightness, contrast, effects, etc. are also included. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm MSM 7227 600 MHz processor which makes the phone experience minimal lag.

The device comes with a standard Li-Ion 1200 mAh battery which offers talk time of up to 6 hours and stand-by time of up to 372 hours.

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Mobile Phones – The All Encompassing Gadgets

Posted on February 5, 2023 by schatzi

We belong to a world where progress is the watchword at every step of our lives. Fine traces of technological advancement seep in to every sector to make a positive impact on human existence. The most prominent impact is the fact that human lives are rendered simple and hassle free due to the proliferation of utility enriched equipments created to resolve everyday chores. In this ever increasing assimilation of useful products, mobile phones have emerged as very popular gadgets of the new generation. Fuelled by the power of the evolving technology, mobile phones have far lot to offer now than what they had been catering during the initial days. In fact, they have metamorphosed into all encompassing devices of the future with a whole lot of functions and features to boost their potential.

The mobile phone industry of the present day harnesses tremendous potential to present us with some awe inspiring devices that deliver more than just the conventional communication platform that they had set out to provide. It is, of course the relentless endeavour on the part of the mobile phone manufacturers who have applied their intelligence to the concoction of some revolutionary mobile phones in the world today. Rising technology has made it extremely simple for them to present cutting edge cameras that can match the prowess of digital cameras any day. Added to these impressive cameras are some superb enhancing features like professional lenses, optical zoom, digital zoom and so forth. Mobile phones have also been giving music system firms a run for their money through some of the most awesome music players with boosting applications like 3D stereo effects, mega bass, equalizer, stereo widening, loudness control, playlist options and download facilities. What’s more, these wonder devices have also revolutionised mobile Internet browsing through the application of Web browsers like WAP, XHTML and HTML to allow professionals to take care of their work on the move.

Mobile phones have made their foray into different segments and showed their multi-utility prowess to emerge as the extremely popular tools of the future.

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Major Reasons Why Digital “Transformation Via Disruption” Is Not Always a Good Idea

Posted on January 6, 2023 by schatzi

First of all, we need to understand what the concepts of digital transformation and digital disruption actually mean.

Digital transformation is the complete process of realigning of the business and technology models with considerable investments in order to effectively engage the target customers on the digital medium throughout different phases of the customer experiences. The major aim of digital transformation is to correctly address the customer needs in the best possible manners.

Digital disruption is said to occur when any of the existing industry comes across a major challenger which offers bigger value to the customer base. The challenger company’s offerings are much superior to what the existing firms are offering. As a result, the existing firms are not able to compete with the new player in the market.

One of the best examples of digital disruption is Uber. The existing taxi industry was highly affected when Uber hit the market. Uber came to the market with taxi offerings which offer considerably greater value than an average taxi. As a result the company captured the market share very fast resulting into a disruption in the existing taxi industry. The model that Uber adopted is fundamentally unique and thus it became very tough for any other taxi company to replicate this model so easily.

The product development teams and technology teams in the legacy businesses are forced to implement a whole host of changes in terms of social interactions, value creation and business mindset due to the challenges brought in by the digital natives like Netflix and Amazon.

The Challenge: Why Digital Transformation via Disruption doesn’t always work for Entrepreneurs

The digital transformation via disruption does not always work for the entrepreneurs due to certain reasons. Some of the major ones are discussed below:

  • Change is difficult and challenging– There are several path-breaking changes that are required for bringing in digital transformation via disruption. These changes are not easily executable by the technology teams and product development teams in the business organizations. These changes which are required for digital transformation via disruption are not a welcome change for the corporate leaders who usually prefers to work within their comfort level. The resistance that comes within the organization towards the changes can grind the transformations resulting into the failure of the initiative.
  • Not many Digital Agencies have the funds or the power to keep up with the constantly changing tech trends– Digital transformations are usually retarded mid-way when the operation and implementation costs are hampering the revenue and savings growth of a concerned company. According to a research report by McKinsey, most of the leading companies who aim in conducting digital transformation via transformation exhaust their resources/budget within first three months of starting the initiative.
  • Talent Gap: Digital transformations require new talent with every tech evolution– The digital transformations necessarily demand new talents which also include qualified and experienced software engineers who are well-trained in the newly evolved programming languages. Young product managers with contemporary perspectives are also needed for conducting this change. At the same time qualified data scientists, artificial intelligent experts etc. are also required for conducting digital transformation via disruption. Most of the times the companies which have taken the initiative could not find adequate talents for the execution resulting in the failure of the initiative.

  • Too much focus on one aspect of the product– This has been found that many companies who take up this initiative end up focusing too much on one particular aspect instead of giving attention to all the necessary aspects equally. One of the examples being the businesses focus on Customer innovation eventually overhauls the backend/frontend/Cloud infrastructure. Ideally, the companies who have taken the initiative of digital transformation should focus on several aspects at the same time like migrating to the cloud infrastructure and at the same time conducting experimentations on mobile applications etc.

  • Getting carried with the Digital Disruption process & spending too much time planning than executing a plan– There are several instances when the companies undertaking the initiative of digital disruption end up spending a lot of time in the planning and the execution is terribly slowed down. This snail’s pace in the execution process has proved to be one of the major reasons of failure for the digital disruption process.

  • Increased competitiveness– The companies which have undertaken the initiative experiences increased competitiveness amongst the teams which leads to lack of focus and the tendency to adopt shortcuts for quick success. The management also lacks focus on several aspects and thus the teams within the concerned company starve of the resourceful ideas eventually leading to the failure of the initiative.

The Solution: What must be done for a smooth Digital Transformation

Here is a list of tips which can help in the smooth digital transformation.

  • Bringing a change in the approach– The focus should be ideally on the innovation rather than cost savings. If a company is more concerned about the cost associated in bringing in the change, then that can be an indicator that the game is soon nearing an end.
  • Becoming data-driven– The majority of the successful digital organizations are completely data-driven. The digital companies should ideally push their services and products by determining the demand in the market. Determination of demand can be done by studying the data carefully. The data has the power of telling the facts clearly which would in turn help in making in right business decision.
  • Embracing the cloud– It is safe to embrace the cloud in the present times and there is no risk involved. There are several big corporate companies which have been operating for years and by adopting the cloud technology they would be able to vacate a lot of cognitive space which in turn can be used foe IT functions of greater value. This would highly help the digital company to bring in the digital transformation via disruption.

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