A CEO related this story to me last week: A few years ago, most of my meetings started late, Invariably someone forgot to check their email the previous night. Now its different- my assistant sends them a what’s app reminder message 10 mins before the meeting. Majority of the meeting begins on time.” This behaviour underlines a three profound trends that’s changing the workplace Messaging As The Killer App In a world where everything is instant--noodles to news, energy to equity, asynchronous messaging has emerged as the true killer app on mobile; not even phone calls come close. Messaging is low friction, non-intrusive, works at your own pace, and is perfect for multi-tasking. It’s not just the teens anymore that are texting. Whether itsyour latest sales forecast or a status update, Lets face it, messaging is convenient.According to research from CTIA-The wireless association, the average text message is read within 90 seconds during the workday, whereas email responses average 90 minutesYour Team is a Bunch of MillennialsThe Internet generation has entered the workplace.They think in 140 characters devour everything from the emoji (stickers) to parody Twitter accounts. In an increasingly fragmented communication landscape, the mobile phone has become the primary business device for the majority of the day. A text message is apt to get their attention instantly.The Rise of The Mobile Only WorkerIDC estimates that there will be 1.2 billion mobile-only workers worldwide in 2015, almost 37 per cent of the workforce.This is not you’re the knowledge worker who is away from his desk at times and uses his mobile as a replacement to his laptop This is the truly desk free who has been empowered by the mobile phone. - The civil engineer who spend his time onsite. - The flight attendant- The retail salesman on the floor- The warehouse assistant- the insurance salesman selling policies all day travelling the city’s bylanes- The fertilizer salesman who is visiting farmers all day.- The doctor who is flitting between surgery and consulting roomThe mobile worker is always connected and his primary device is the smartphone!So whats up? What’s the problem?Sending a message to your friend to meet for coffee is very different from updating your co-worker. “Meet me in conference room,” leads to “Why?”, and then “So we can review the new project,” which prompts, “Oh, the $5M order ?” – and suddenly, you’re in hot water, divulging sensitive information on an unsecured channel and opening the company up to risks on several fronts. Trouble brews so fast. Taiwan has banned the use of messaging apps such as LINE on government computers/phones due to security reasons, Premier Jiang Yi-huah announced recently.A CIO at a financial institution recently told me he has uncovered more than 50 company groups on a consumer-messaging network, on which employees routinely post company information. Companies have started to look at deploying enterprise-messaging Apps. By all accounts, legacy enterprise IM has quite frankly been clunky and sub-par. They usually consist of a 10- year old desktop messenger dressed up recently with a mobile client, no one uses it. Startups like Avaamo have launched a new class of enterprise messaging that provides the slick “ease of use “ users crave and at the same time provides governance, control and security, enterprises care about. These new tools have been built for India’s patchy network and truly mobile first from the ground up. The evolution of the messaging- the killer app on mobile to a essential workplace communications platform has already begun!(The author, Ram Menon is Founder and CEO of Avaamo - a messaging app for the enterprise).
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Connected With Linkedin These days social networks are getting too big to handle. So they’ve figured it works to break things up into specific-use-case apps and keep their users engaged in activities they find useful. LinkedIn already has a couple of apps, but now its contacts app, Connected, comes to Android to go more mainstream. On both the Play Store and the App Store, it’s a free little utility that calls for minimal fiddling.
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"Last year, Whatsapp changed its encryption algorithm several times and, every time, it was breached,” says Saket Modi, hacker, entrepreneur and CEO of Lucideus Technologies, which just created an app that monitors wayward activity on your smartphone. That’s geekspeak for: “Your WhatsApp chats, including deleted ones, would have been accessible to any hacker worth his salt”. And we are talking about a company that was valued at $19 billion at some point during the year. Only in November 2014 did WhatsApp finally embrace end-to-end encryption, which will ostensibly address the issue.
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Sound Of Music For lovers of classical music, entire compositions have their own apps on the App Store. Take Vivaldi's Four Seasons, a symphonic poem loved even by those otherwise unfamiliar with classical music. This legendary and lively composition has an app in which you can attend two performances of Four Seasons: a purely classic take by the English Concert under Trevor Pinnock and a recomposed version by the German composer Max Richter. As you watch you can see the musical score scroll by and a "beat map" pulsing out the music. You can also see the orchestra performing and there's a detailed commentary so that you get to know it intimately.
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Talent At A Touch Think of it as a creativity browser. TouchTalent is an Android app and web community put together by a group in New Delhi and they’re obviously on to a good thing as they have funding from over fifteen angel investors to take their idea further. TouchTalent is just what the name implies — swipe your screen to browse through thousands of works by creative people.
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When the annals of the 21st century are written, how will it’s greatest flag-bearer, the Internet be remembered the best? Will it be as the bridge that brought people closer, irrespective of distance? Or will it be the service that saved countless man-hours, by bringing everything from shopping to banking home (and then wasted all of it by inventing social media and Angry Birds)? Will its legacy be remembered as the repository of information that anybody could tap into, any time? All of these, without a doubt. But more importantly, the Internet will, and should be remembered as the great leveller; everybody — rich, poor, employed, student — whoever you are, you have a voice, and the power to start a revolution.
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The sixth edition of the BW|Businessworld SME Whitebook was launched by Amarendra Sinha, development commissioner and additional secretary, Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises at a well-attended function in Gurgaon. Eminent leaders from industry expressed their views on various facets of doing business including funding, technology and branding. While the opening session talked about manufacturing, another session looked at how SMEs can make the most of the rising trend towards online retail.(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 15-12-2014)
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“The Internet is currently not broke, and the FCC is out to fix it,” began John Oliver, American talk-show host and comedian, introducing his show’s discussion on Net neutrality. America’s telecom regulator Federal Communications Council (FCC) had just proposed allowing Internet carriers to give preference on their network to websites in exchange for a fee.
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