Self-driving cars cruising off of MCity’s simulated urban and suburban streets and into the general populace might still feel like a ways away before becoming reality. But if you were to drive to Ann Arbor’s neighboring city, Ypsilanti, you would come across an existing company that’s been working toward driving-assistance technology that can make your vehicle feel more connected to the internet. And it is technology that can have real-world benefits today.

Source: Voyomotive

Voyomotive, one of Logic Solutions�?clients, is working toward supplemental software that simply helps drivers, rather than take the wheel out of their hands. Described on its website as “an advanced telematics system that increases driving safety, convenience and fuel efficiency,�?Voyomotive’s hardware, called Voyo, and companion phone app can connect any car sold since 1996 to the Voyomotive Cloud on the Internet of Things.

Voyo’s features include starting and stopping the car remotely, tracking and conserving fuel, locating and assessing a car in an accident, and more. On the horizon, plans are in place to develop preventative features to avoid accidents or wasted car energy.

“EcoStart and our Stop-at-Park technologies have a potential for significant fuel savings without the huge financial and environmental cost of the next best thing �?a new car,�?said Voyomotive CTO Robert Vogt. “Voyo’s connected car features will revolutionize the driving experience for drivers of newer and older vehicles alike.�?br /> Since Google first introduced its driverless car in Silicon Valley in 2012, the idea of a self-driving car has slowly shifted from sci-fi fantasy to reality. The technology is still a few years out from being open for public use, but we at Logic can tell you firsthand that the Southeast Michigan area has plenty of rapidly-advancing technology to tide you over.

The post MCity & Voyomotive: SE Michigan’s assisted automotive technology appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.

In recent years, the fast-paced development of web technologies has dramatically powered development activities past its traditional boundary. Web technology has not only been entrenched in modern browsers, it has also contributed to enterprise-level Web applications, mobile application development, and server-side services, as well as some emerging platforms like the Internet of Things.

Here are several highlights of how advances in web technologies have changed the development process:

• HTML5 brings many new features (like built-in video/audio playback, local cache, etc.) to benefit modern browsing (cross-browser compatibility, mobile optimization, etc).
• Working with HTML5, CSS3 ensures easier and but still powerful building of web pages.
• The development of the JavaScript ecosystem contributes a lot of frameworks (like AngulaJS, Backbone.js, Ember.js, React.js, etc.) that unquestionably facilitate the development of web technologies.
• Node.js, a JavaScript (Google V8) powered cross-platform runtime environment opens the gate of server-side development by just using web technologies.
• On June 17, 2015, The General Assembly of Ecma International has announced the approval of the next version of JavaScript (with the codename ECMAScript 6 or ES6, now called ECMAScript 2015 officially). The new version brings foundational changes to JavaScript which enables the development of larger, more complex web applications.

Web technologies also play a very important role as they enter the mobile application development arena. They benefit mobile developers through its simplicity and fast-paced development, as well as its �?strong>cross-platform�?nature – “Write Once, Run Anywhere�?

The majority of development work nowadays still uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build web pages, then these web pages are run in an internal browser (called WebView), which is embedded in a native application (called Native Shell). If needed, the Native Shell can also expose native APIs (like camera, location service, etc.) to JavaScript. The applications built in this way are called Hybrid Applications. Some frameworks (like Apache Cordova (PhoneGap), Ionic, etc.) can facilitate this development.

In general, the benefits of Hybrid Applications fit well with our needs in terms of development process as well as our marketing strategy:

• Its �?strong>cross-platform�?nature can help reduce development time and cost dramatically.
• We can easily design for various situations, like different platforms, device sizes, etc.
• We can provide rapid prototyping and easy distribution to each platform (web browsing or app store).

However, this approach still has several “pain points�?that prevent developers from choosing hybrid applications over native applications, such as:

• Poor performance. Although the internal browser (WKWeb​View in iOS and Chrome WebView in Android) has been improved to provide faster web page reddening speed, the overall performance is still not comparable to what a native application brings.
• Poor Native API support. With the help of frameworks, the application can access to the native features of underlying platforms by leveraging external “plugins�? However, using such “plugins�?actually brings uncertainty as well as complexity in managing the development as well as a required level of maintenance.

Then, is it possible to bring web technologies to “native�?mobile application development?

The answer is YES.

With the help of JavaScript engine (also called JavaScript Runtime), developers can still write the application by using web technologies, but also allow the application to run directly on platforms (like iOS, Android) supported by JavaScript Runtime as a native application.

Because of this, developers can utilize the fast and convenient web technologies for development as well as the counterpart performance and user experience that a native application provides.

The framework Appcelerator Titanium is the earliest pioneer in this area and it does a great job in creating mobile applications on different platforms from just one JavaScript codebase. In March 2015, the release of React Native by Facebook brings this approach to the next level.

Compared to Appcelerator Titanium, React Native uses a batched asynchronous messaging protocol for establishing communication between native main thread and a background thread where a JavaScript engine runs to process JavaScript code. Without blocking the native main thread, the application can be more responsive and bring a more native-like user experience. Beyond that, React Native also ships with React.js – the emerging powerful framework that helps build applications easily by using its novel technologies (like Virtual DOM, One-way Binding, etc.).

Currently React Native is used in two of Facebook’s apps: Facebook Groups and Facebook Ads Manager. Without mentioning it, it is hard to tell they are not built upon native SDK and instead are built on React Native.

The “core�?need for using web technologies in native mobile application development is to build applications with a powerful performance and native-feeling UI. And the most promising part of React Native just lies on it – perhaps it can help lead us to this new stage of mobile application development.

Leo Shi is the Mobile Tech Lead at Logic Solutions. He participates in the entire development process of iOS and Android mobile applications, and web-based mobile apps.

The post Bringing Web Technologies to “Native�?Mobile Application Development appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.

Source: Facebook

Facebook’s latest updates could change this entire eCommerce experience.The social media giant recently announced several updates to the platform, including allowing eCommerce retailers to embed Facebook Messenger into the shopping process. Facebook Messenger is the company’s instant messaging platform feature, which allows people to directly message (DM) each other. For mobile users, Facebook Messenger is also a separate app. Zulily and Everlane  are already piloting the feature.

Sound familiar? Thousands of businesses have already been using social media for customer service and it has worked very well for them. Twitter is a common site for companies to improve support, quickly resolve problems, and keep customers happy. Businesses have also used their own Facebook pages as communication platforms. It comes as no shock that Facebook would want to capitalize on Messenger’s potential.

This new integration opens up a world of possibilities for retailers looking for easier ways to connect and interact with their customers:

• 

  Source: Facebook

  After submitting an order to a retailer with the Messenger function, customers can select to sync their order with their Facebook identity. This will bring information of their order into a message thread between the customer and the business.

• Customers can receive (almost) real-time shipping information and updates in Messenger
• Retailers can address questions during the actual shopping experience
• Clicking on the message will allow consumers to change or cancel their order or view order details.
• If a customer wants to add or change an item in your order, it’s as easy as typing in the request in the message! Because the customer’s ordering, billing, and shipping information are synced with the consumer’s Facebook identity, retailers can quickly and efficiently fulfill requests.

What makes Facebook Messenger’s integration with eCommerce noteworthy and significant for consumers? First off, it demonstrates a move away from traditional, messy email communication and makes it easier for consumers to shop online. Whether it is from a desktop or you’re one of the 79% of smartphone owners who use a mobile device to assist with shopping, being able to complete the shopping experience as painlessly as possible is very important. Plus, Messenger is an app that most people already use; it’s not another app or channel that a consumer will have to download and learn to use.

Next, Facebook is familiar. It’s a great way to interact with a growing population of people who already use it to talk to people, so why not use it to also interact with brands?

To add to that, Messenger is immediate. A study by Forrester found that �?4% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.�?Yes, almost half of all online consumers want help from a live person while they’re shopping online right when they have a question. Unanswered questions mean the consumer abandon their cart and go to another business, which means losing a sale for your online store.

Plus, there is room for brands to customize Messenger and make it their own. Messenger can be integrated with the company’s own mobile app (if they have one). Retailers can share videos and product photos with consumers easily in a message. Consumers can then turn around and easily share the content with their own group of friends or on their social media wall. Sharing the brand’s image could become a new sales and business avenue for your online business.

As cool as Facebook Messenger’s new functionality may seem, there are people who aren’t as enthusiastic about this new level of communication. For some, it is a matter of privacy – giving a social platform like Facebook potential access to personal financial information might be unsettling. Additionally, it’s highly likely that targeted advertisements based on shopping interests or purchased items will make their way into this system. Retailers could potentially shell a lot of money in paid advertisements to get access to this personalized shopping experience.

It’s hard to say at the moment how successful Facebook Messenger’s eCommerce customer service will be. But one thing’s for sure: Facebook is helping to change the conversation around eCommerce and mobile marketing.

Customized eCommerce Solutions

Logic Solutions can help you strategize your eCommerce and mCommerce game plans. Find out how you can have a beautiful, functional frontend and a powerful backend to support your business needs.

Let us help you

Jennifer Pan is Logic’s Marketing Coordinator. By day she is a mild-mannered Logician blogging about tech trends and designing WordPress sites. By night (and weekends), she swordfights and performs stuntwork with Ring of Steel Action Theatre.

The post Facebook Brings eCommerce Customer Service to Messenger appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.

The trip to Chicago today is the third time I’ve ridden a “high-speed�?train in three weeks in three countries. Each ride gave me insight into how high-speed trains have not only affected the day-to-day schedule of people travelling from one location to another, they have also brought parts of the world closer together for greater, more interesting experiences.

I started my trip going to Fuzhou, China where my father is from to sweep the tombs during the Tomb Sweeping Festival to pay my respects to my ancestors. In 1978 when my father returned to China the first time after 30 years away from home, he took a train from Guangzhou (close to Hong Kong) to Fuzhou. The train was so slow that it took the whole day (24 hours) to cross the neighboring provinces. According to travel restrictions, my father was only allowed to bring 5 large packages and 5 small packages from Hong Kong. Among the 5 big items were a TV and a refrigerator. The 13-inch TV became the only TV in the village that sometimes would bring a ton of people from all over the village into my father’s courtyard to watch it. My relatives were so poor that they could not afford the electricity to run the refrigerator, so they brought it out and plugged it in when my father visited them.

A photo of my cousins who went up the mountain with me. They are standing in front of the tomb.

I remember when they brought out the refrigerator to stock food when I visited China for first time with my father in 1990. It was the first time I had hiked up the mountain to the family tomb. The mountain didn’t have a lot of trees and the trail was clear. My cousins told me that the trail leading to the tomb was the main road for people going north to Beijing to take the national examination in the Forbidden City. The exam brought the brightest students from all over China to the Forbidden City in hopes of being the champion (狀�? �?or receiving one of the highest ranking scores. A champion would receive recognition from the emperor and be guaranteed a nice government job.

Over the past 25 years, that trail going up to the mountain has gradually disappeared. Freeways and high-speed trains are replacing the mountain trail as roads toward Beijing. Nowadays, I could travel from Shanghair to Fuzhou in six hours on a high-speed train at 180 miles per hour. The only time anyone travels through the mountain anymore is for the Tomb Sweeping Festival. The trail has become very slippery and trees have grown everywhere, making it difficult to find the tomb. My cousins occasionally get calls from people asking them how to find certain tomb. I was impressed by their knowledge of gravesites as well as their ability to walk on the trail. I am embarrassed to say that even though they are in their late 60s, they had to grab me several times whenever I started slipping downhill. I asked them how they know their way around so well. They said “When you have to spend four hours a day for ten years trying to find every available firewood to make sure that your family has fire for cooking, you pretty much know every piece of this mountain.�?/p>

High-speed trains and improvements to transportation technology have changed the lives of people all over China. It used to take me five hours to go from our Shanghai office to Nanjing, but now it takes one and half hours. From Nanjing to Beijing is only another four hours on the same train. So in theory, I can stop by all three Logic offices in a day. That was unthinkable when I set up these offices back in the 2000s.

Recently on the way back to the US from Taiwan, my wife and I stopped by Tokyo to see our daughter, Emily, who is now working there. Emily said that a new Shinkanshen (high-speed bullet train) just opened in the northern coastal city Kanazawa. We used our Japan Rail Passes (a pass only for foreigners to get unlimited rides) to see that city. The train was very comfortable with power outlet available in every seat, traveling at 160 miles per hour, and arriving from point to point at the precise minute it was expected.

There was another type of high-speed bullet train that we experienced in Kanazawa. While we toured the city, we also made sure to check out the local restaurant hotspots. Someone at the train station tourist information center suggested we visit the restaurants around the famous fish market in the center of the city. After waiting for 30 minutes in line, we got into a popular sushi establishment. It is one of those sushi train restaurants run with modern technology. An iPad with a self-service ordering app was mounted on every table. I thought the iPad POS app system (www.touchandserve.com) that we’ve developed was very impressive, but these iPad stations were way cooler! After placing an order through the iPad app, a miniature Shinkanshen model train carried our sushi through the restaurant, stopping next to us. We took the sushi plates off the train and pressed a button to send the train back to it’s the home station. It is really cool to see “high-speed�?technology compliment the traditional restaurant experience!

For a country that invented high-speed internet and changed the lifestyles of a whole generation, true high-speed train is still a far-off dream for most major American cities. So many technological advances have improved the livelihoods of millions of people around the world and it will keep finding ways to make it easier. I would love to someday be able to travel to Chicago in just one and half hours. I am also craving for a high-speed sushi train with delicious sushi to come to a table near me. Maybe we’ll see sushi trains in restaurants in the U.S. before high-speed rail becomes available to the populace.

The post High-Speed Trains, High-Speed Technology appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.

Developers are often just as excited about your concept as you are. It’s not flattery; we honestly get psyched about great ideas. It’s going to be beautiful, modern, and do all the things!

But are you prepared for a developer’s questions? What is your budget?  What devices will support your app? Are there different types of users? And so on.

Developers need to know as much as possible about your app and project game plan early on in the discovery process so they can help you build it. Those details are something you can define together with your developer (at a cost), or information you can prepare in advance to streamline the process and save some expense.

Before your first meeting you should be able to answer these five questions about your project:

1. What will your app do?
Seems obvious, right? Beware: it’s often easy to talk about your business vision, but more difficult to clearly articulate the functionality of the technology. Who are your users? How do they engage with the app? What pain is alleviated or gain achieved?

2. What is your MVP (minimum viable product)?
A minimum viable product is the most pared down version of a product that can still be released to satisfy early adopters and to gather crucial feedback. This does not mean the MVP is about creating a minimal product.

An MVP has three key characteristics:

• It has enough value that the target audience is willing to use it or buy it as-is
• It demonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adopters
• It provides a feedback loop to guide future development

Sometimes it’s easiest to start with your entire universe of features and assign priorities and phases to each one to create a workable roadmap. There are cool digital tools for this, but sticky notes can also work well!

3. What feature set should your product have?
Imagine yourself looking at your finished app. What’s the first thing you do with it? Answering that question alone can get the ball rolling.

It’s also easy to overlook common features that aren��t “sexy�? like:

• User login
• Database integration
• Screen transitions

Aside from building your feature set, it’s important for discussion at the outset so that the developer can also envision an excellent user experience, which is critical for market acceptance.

But don’t worry if you’re not sure whether you’ve thought of everything. What is most important for the early discovery process is that you are able to talk about priority features that are must-haves.

4. How much time do you have to contribute to the project?
Many people are not prepared for how much time they might be asked to contribute to a project. Even though developers perform the bulk of the technical work, we require your input, such as feedback on a design comp, reviewing priorities and beta versions, and providing content.

It’s important to be upfront with the developer about how much time you have to contribute. Together you can establish a communication cadence that works for everyone.

5. What is does success look like?
You should be able to tell a developer what constitutes a successful end to your project (note: this is not the same as what will make your business a viral success!). Knowing your definition of success helps developers work toward a common goal and make suggestions for improvements that you might not have considered, but could be easily accomplished. Your goal here is to be specific and establish measurable goals.

Overwhelmed? Excited? Either way, we got your back. Check out our handy resources for mobile, web, and eCommerce development beginners that will get you thinking about how to get from square one to the finish line.

Click here for our development resources!

Angela Kujava is the Director of Innovation and Chief Smoothie Officer at Logic Solutions. She is an ardent supporter of the Oxford comma, and will challenge you to a duel if you believe the contrary. Should you find yourself about to duel Angela, it is valuable to know that her kryptonite is Doritos. 

Jennifer Pan is a marketing coordinator at Logic Solutions. If you want to get her attention, try talking to her about d20s, (board) games, sci-fi and geeky references, or cute animal videos…or all of them at once. Just don’t bring up her uncanny ability to roll natural 1s.

The post 5 Ways To Get the Most Out of Your Relationship with a Developer appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.

The post February 2015 Newsletter appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.

The new set of faces that greet visitors to Logic’s Ann Arbor office

Every year when I travel to Asia to celebrate Chinese New Year, I usually bring back a ton of stuffed animals for the animal of the year. Last week I brought back around 40 goats. They are so cute and were gone minutes after arriving at the office. Some years, I struggle to give the stuffed animals away because they’re not as cute. Who would’ve thought that goats would be so popular?

Ironically, I recently learned that some Chinese believe they should avoid having babies in the Year of the Goat because goats are thought to be weak animals. A popular Chinese saying describing someone in danger is “sending a goat into the mouth of a tiger (羊入虎口)�? Some people even go as far as to induce labor to have babies born in the Year of the Horse and not the Goat. To me, this superstition is total nonsense. Goats don’t represent weakness; they symbolize gentility and peace, and I am proud my daughter was born in the Year of the Goat.

The most popular auspicious phrase for the new Year of the Goat is “Three goats bring peace and safety (三羊開泰)�?  This is a play on the saying “Three suns bring peace and safety�?because “goat�?and “sun�?in Chinese have the same pronunciation. The saying is a wish for the three suns (who were sons of an ancient god) to bring a prosperous early spring (new year).

I am not sure if I need three goats or not,  but there were many things that happened in the Year of the Horse in sets of three that led to the Year of the Goat that I want to share here.

Three Days of Disasters
There were three consecutive days of disasters during my visit to Shanghai last summer. The first one was on August 1 when a series of explosions from a chemical company’s pipe leakage in Kaohsiung, Taiwan ripped through 6 kilometers of road and killed 25 people. The second one was the explosion at Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products, an automotive parts manufacturer, on August 2 in Kunshan, an industrial city in the eastern province of Jiangsu, China. The blast killed 68 people. The third one was on August 3 when a magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook the province of Yunnan and killed 617 people.

Each day there was a headline of a major catastrophe, and every morning at breakfast I was shaken. The owners of the chemical company in Kaohsiung and the automotive parts manufacturer in Kunshan expressed their sincerest regrets after they were arrested for negligence. They both said that they knew that there were things that they could have done to prevent such tragedies, but they just had not gotten around to doing it. These tragedies could have been prevented but, instead, these owners willfully put their employees and civilians at risk because they didn’t want to spend the money implementing safety protocols.

Quantum Compliance (www.usequantum.com), a subsidiary of Logic Solutions that specializes in environmental health and safety software solutions, had numerous discussions with companies in China last year. Many companies agreed that our software would greatly enhance the health and safety of their employees, yet I was told over and over again that their management was more focused in growing top line (revenue) so these safety measures would have to wait. Similarly, many city officials in most Chinese cities are so proud of their rapidly-built skyscrapers that they fail to consider the environment or the safety of their cities. As a result, their focus is not on maximizing the safety of their people and the damage done to the environment and the numbers of poorly-structured buildings continue to increase.

As we move forward into 2015, I want to focus on how the Year of the Goat can help us think more about the safety of the people around us and the impact we have on the world.

Three Countries to Call Home
2014 was the first year I was able to travel to three countries that I was or still am a citizen of and that I called home.

Our family reunion in front of the condo where we used to live in Santo Domingo.

I lived in Taiwan from 1963-1978, and in the Dominican Republic from 1978-1980, and have been in the US since 1980. Many months ago, I got an invitation to my good friend Shin-ming’s daughter, Elisa, and her fiancé’s, Chad, wedding in the Dominican Republic, which has become a hot wedding destination in recent years. I got so excited, and told my wife and children that we were going to the Dominican Republic and could also see where I used to live. They’ve all heard me talking about the epic story of how my parents sold everything we ever owned in 3 months, and took my sisters and me to a country that we’ve never been and couldn’t speak the language of. My sisters heard about my plans to travel to the Dominican Republic and said their families wanted to see it as well. Not only that, but we also decided to bring our parents from Taiwan and make it into a big family reunion.

My father was separated from his family during the civil war in China and has been for more than 30 years. Going to Dominican Republic was the ticket for my father to reunite with his family (Taiwan and China were still very much enemy states in 1978). Although my parents paid a huge price to get out of Taiwan in 1978, the one-and-half years I spent in Santo Domingo were unforgettable.

Three “M”s That Gave Us Harbaugh
The Year of the Horse was also a year of turmoil for Michigan sports, but we all believe that we Michigan fans had our wishes come true by getting a top-notch football coach, Jim Harbaugh.

Three “M”s that helped to land Jim Harbaugh: “Millions�? “Mobile�? “Michigan�?

It costs millions to get a pricey coach nowadays, and Jim Harbaugh was no exception. Although he didn’t want to be the highest paid coach at the college level, the $5M salary and $2M bonus were no small package.

After rumors that University of Michigan offered the then-49ers coach a lucrative contract to return to Ann Arbor, Michigan’s huge alumni network and football fans, myself included, took to Twitter in anticipation for Harbaugh’s return. The buzz generated from social media and mobile users demonstrated to the coach that he would be well-received if he decided to return.

Finally, Jim Harbaugh is and was a Michigan man. He was Michigan’s quarterback when I was going to school and I would like to think he would give anything for the chance to return to the Wolverine state. You can take a man out of Ann Arbor but it is difficult to take the love for Ann Arbor out of the man.

Three Wishes for the New Year
While attending Tzu Chi Foundation’s entrepreneur camp last year, I was given a book called “Practice three kind things, realize three wishes every year�? The three wishes the book concludes with has stayed with me since.

1) Say good words to purify one’s mind (口説好話以淨化人�?.
2) Practice kind actions to bring harmony to the society (身行好事以祥和社�?.
3) Make kind wishes for a disaster-free world (心發好願以天下無�?.

Many things came in sets of three this past year. I know that the stuffed animal goats that I brought back will bring a year of peace, harmony, and safety to Ann Arbor. Happy Year of the Goat!

(Our non-Chinese-speaking members of the Management Team agreed to be a part of a video and try their hand at using Chinese to wish our overseas teams a Happy Chinese New Year. I think they did a better job than Mark Zuckerberg at his Beijing interview! You can watch our video below.)

The post Send Off the Year of the Horse and Welcome the Year of the Goat appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.

Please contact us if you’d like your own Logic-signal search light.

9:00am EST: “Keith, we have a crisis! Our client’s website is down and I couldn’t get hold of anyone!!” a project manager at our Ann Arbor office called on my cell phone.

9:05am: “Who do you need? And what’s the problem?”

9:06 am: “The client could not bring up the home page on which they sell products by the minute! Help!”

9:08am, about 10pm in China on the eve of the Chinese New Year (it’s the Year of the Goat): “…well, too bad! Our developers (all in China) are all drinking, singing, and watching the national festival saga. They’re on break so give them a break!”

(Just kidding, I did not say that.)

At 9:25am, I got a hold of our lead developer in Shanghai, and by 9:30am we identified the internet intrusion that caused the system slowdown. After contacting a US hosting company, the site was back live in just minutes, well within the client’s agreed service level agreement.

As you may know, we have development centers in the greater China area – Shanghai, Beijing, and Taipei – and each has its technical specialties that support a variety of projects for US customers and clients.

Unlike large-scale software development houses, we at Logic have a very nimble, agile, and responsive operation (with well-controlled internal processes) to best serve our customers that are small in size and fast-paced in business nature. By having technical staff in the U.S. and our development teams in China (and dedicated staff that work long hours to ensure overlap and coverage), we are able to provide almost 24/7 around-the-clock support for our customers. This is unseen anywhere else.

And that’s only one of the Logic advantages.

That’s what I do. I’m the person responsible for connecting the dots (or sites). I’m proud of the unique round-the-clock service we’re able to provide our customers. And yes, I do get enough sleep every day.

Keith Shen
Director of Offshore Operations

Ed. note: We are very happy to hear that Keith gets enough sleep. Sometimes we wonder…

The post A Note from the Director of Offshore Operations: A Day in the Life appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.

Source: Egrig

Email is messy.  For many people, managing cluttered inboxes, promotional offers, and spam is an arduous task.  And that one message you received weeks ago with a very important appointment reminder but you don’t remember who sent it or what the body of the message contained?  Good luck wading through the rubbish to try to find it.

Over the past couple of months, a number of companies have announced an alternative to email overload.  Their goals are simple: make it easier for users to find important messages and increase productivity.  Google, Dropbox, Microsoft, and IBM all approached the email overload challenge from different perspectives and have come up with (what they think) is the solution to all of your inbox woes.

Here is a quick rundown of what these tech giants have to offer.

Google Inbox

Inbox is Google’s long-term replacement for Gmail.  It does away with the familiar email user experience and replaces with with a social-media-esque aesthetic.  With its icon-driven interface, Inbox aims to not only make it easier to follow email conversation threads (and archive the ones no no longer need) but to also keep track of important information, such as appointments or tasks on to-do lists.  Users can “pin�?priority messages to the top of your email list, be snoozed to reappear later at a specific date and time or even once you’ve reached a specific destination, and then archived to keep your inbox free of visual clutter.

Google’s algorithms also predict which emails you’re less likely to read, such as store sales promotions and social media updates, and bundles them together as Low Priority.  Inbox also lets users customize their email filters to best optimize what messages are more or less important.

Inbox has received much critique so far for its different user experience.  Fortunately, it is still in beta and limited to invite-only users, thus allowing developers to continue smoothing out wrinkles prior to opening it up to the whole public.

Dropbox Mailbox

In early 2013 Dropbox acquired Mailbox, the popular email app originally for iOS devices, and has since released not only Android and desktop versions, but also some new features.

The cloud storage company gave Mailbox an Auto-swipe feature, which allows the app to learn about the emails the user archives and defers until later.  The app can then act appropriately when similar missives hit the inbox in the future.

The desktop edition of Mailbox is currently still in beta and has an unknown official release date.

Microsoft Clutter

Clutter is an inbox tool for Microsoft Office 265 business customers that help users prioritize email within Outlook.

Like Google’s Inbox, Clutter learns to weed out messages the tool thinks you’re more likely to ignore while placing more important emails on top.  It separates unwanted emails into a designated “Clutter�?folder that can be viewed at any time without taking space in your main inbox.

What if you’re working on a new project or a new role?  Clutter can learn and adapt to a user’s new patterns too, according to a blog post.  “The Clutter experience is personalized to each individual and reflects an email experience that adapts to your actions and preferences without you having to do anything. The information Clutter learns from each user’s actions [is] only applied to that user’s experience and are not shared with anyone else.�?/p>

Clutter can also be disabled or enabled through the options menu of the Outlook Web app.

At the moment, Clutter is only available to business customers.  Microsoft currently has no plans for release to non-business users.

IBM Verse

Verse combines Big Blue’s cloud, analytics, social, and security technologies in an enterprise email solution.

IBM’s answer to Google Inbox and Microsoft Clutter analyzes each user’s social connections, activities, correspondence patterns, and tool usage, and uses that data to personalize each user’s experience.  It integrates the many ways employees connect each day – via email, meetings, calendars, file sharing, instant messaging, social updates, video chats, and more – in a single collaboration environment.  By overlaying the concepts of social, collaboration, and communications with analytics, Verse helps users to better understand relationships between individuals and teams, and more effectively track and manage project and task delegation.

By making multiple tools, such as email, calendar, to-dos, social networks, cats, online meetings, and documents accessible at a glance, Verse is able to learn about  a user’s important tasks and correspondence, and subsequently deprioritize less items of lower importance.

Verse is currently available in beta and will be offered to channel partners in the first quarter of 2015.

And cats make getting any work done almost impossible.

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But email has become something much bigger and performs many functions in our lives, from alerts to online receipts to transferring and storing important documents to being a daily task manager.  For many people, email has become simultaneously useful and very annoying.  So two years ago, Google’s Gmail team decided that Gmail needed an overhaul.

Presenting Inbox, the radically different long-term replacement for Gmail.

Yes, replacement.  Google Inbox isn’t an upgrade to Gmail.  “Though Gmail isn’t going anywhere �?Inbox’s creators stressed that they love Gmail and that Google plans to keep working on it �?Inbox is meant to be your email system for the next decade,�?wrote Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times, who got an exclusive one-on-one demo of this new product.

Source: Google

Inbox does away with the familiar email user experience of a list of senders and subject lines and features a social-media-esque aesthetic.  Users can view previews of messages and access highlighted content without ever opening the messages themselves.  For example, Manjoo writes, “When your friend sends you some photos, you see the pictures right on the main screen, and you can flip through and dismiss them without going into the message.�?/p>

Source: Google

From giving users updates and relevant details on flights, purchases, and appointments via data-mining the internet, Inbox aims to make it easier to keep track of important information without ever needing to dig through your email archives.  Inbox can also give users reminders about appointments or tasks on to-do lists.  The example Manjoo gives is if you type “call my dentist�? Inbox will automatically add your dentist’s contact information and office hours to the reminder.

There are mixed feelings among the tech press and general public regarding this social-media-inspired Gmail replacement.  It’ll be interesting to keep an eye on Inbox after its release and how well it functions.

Google has not announced an official launch date yet for Inbox but it is expected that early versions of it will be released for Android, iOS devices, and the web on an invitation-only basis.

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Logic Solutions can help you design the solution that you want to share with the world. Let us create the innovative mobile apps, websites, eCommerce, or healthcare solutions you need to stand out.

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Jennifer Pan is a marketing coordinator at Logic Solutions. If you want to get her attention, try talking to her about d20s, (board) games, sci-fi and geeky references, or cute animal videos…or all of them at once. Just don’t bring up her uncanny ability to roll natural 1s.

The post Google announces Inbox to replace Gmail appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.