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New Version of 1st Touch Mobile Innovates Across Multiple Platforms and Devices

8 Feb

ResponseSource Press Release Wire

1st Touch (www.1sttouch.com), the UK’s leading supplier of mobile technology to the social housing and local government sectors has launched version 4.5 of its acclaimed mobile workforce software. Whilst, the new version has been developed using Microsoft Windows Embedded Handheld technology it now includes additional support for Android, Apple and BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. This represents a significant investment in R&D and innovation by 1st Touch and is a response to evolving market demand for these platforms, coupled with the growing variety of devices available.

1st Touch applications can bring significant efficiencies and productivity increases to any application where field based workers are equipped with mobile devices to provide services. 1st Touch has already won widespread acclaim in the social housing and local government markets where the software manages, supports and controls all aspects of mobile workers’ activities. The resilient but flexible system enables programming-free, user-customisable mobile device based solutions to be created through its easy to use graphical interface. As such, the system is specifically designed to simplify handheld form design and data capture. Any type of electronic form can be generated without the need for Business Process Mapping. 1st Touch has also developed a range of high quality integrations with most of the leading housing management and back office systems used in these markets.

1st Touch is keen to stress that whichever mobile platform users chose to run version 4.5 with, the system will still operate using the company’s acclaimed offline working model. This negates the problems of unsympathetic geography and terrain that can disrupt signal strength. With 1st Touch, data is automatically sent and received in compact bursts only when a signal is available. Crucially, this means that users are able to log in to the application and start completing forms even where there is no signal.

Commenting on the launch 1st Touch CEO Robert Dent said, “At 1st Touch we believe in providing a consistent environment. So for our existing customers, any forms designed in the 1st Touch Management Studio to date, can be deployed to the wider variety of mobile devices now supported without any need for redesign. In contrast, platform and device choice for new customers is now completely flexible; supporting the original 1st Touch ethos of facilitating maximum customer choice.

“In terms of our overall strategy, 1st Touch firmly believes that Microsoft continues to supply the most comprehensive platform for mobile workers; encompassing extensive support for device management, device data security and integration into corporate line-of-business environments. As such, 1st Touch will continue to actively develop and support the full 1st Touch Mobile Workforce Management suite running on the current Windows Embedded Handheld platform. In the future we will do the same for Windows Embedded Handheld version 8, in line with Microsoft’s overall strategy for the corporate enterprise mobile workforce. However, 1st Touch acknowledges the importance of customer choice and will monitor industry trends and market requirements closely to consistently offer leading edge, best of breed mobile workforce software across a wide variety of platforms and devices.”
Version 4.5 will be available from Q2 2012.

Ends

About 1st Touch (www.1sttouch.com)

1st Touch, based in Southampton UK, develops a widely acclaimed range of software systems that have enabled numerous field workforce-based organisations to fully embrace mobile technology and so achieve significant savings, greater productivity and more cost-effective use of resources.

1st Touch Mobile delivers clear and unique benefits that make a real and positive impact. These include:

-Enhanced operative route planning and service delivery– better time usage and reduced fuel costs.
- Significant cost reductions for organisations because airtime is minimised and the system is always available – with or without airtime.
-Lone worker safety.
- Flexibility through simple customer control over forms creation and amendment.
- Smooth integration with multiple leading back office and other enterprise
software applications, so that data is entered only once.

1st Touch has a clear focus on the public sector and in particular Local Government; where the software has already been adopted for a wide range of mobile workforce uses.

Ready to use applications for local authority organisations include: Public Buildings, Highways/Street Services, Environmental/Waste Management and Revenues and Benefits, along with Surveying , Planning Control, and Trading Standards. Together with key sectors such social housing, and care delivery, many organisations now benefit from the fast and tangible, best of breed benefits that 1st Touch mobile technology delivers across the enterprise. Users include: Powys County Council, 2010 Rotherham, Wakefield & District Housing, Homeserve, North Ayrshire Council, Philips Collection Services, Amicus Horizon, Peabody and Manchester Northwards
1st Touch is a PartnerSelect Authorised ISV for Motorola, Authorised ISV for Intermec, a certified Gold Partner for Windows Embedded Technology and certified Microsoft Gold ISV Partner .

For further information, please contact:

Cherry Rance
1st Touch
07850 313600
0871 716 3060
cherry.rance@1sttouch.com

or

Leigh Richards
The RIGHT Image PR & Digital Marketing Group
07758 372527
0844 561 7586
leigh.richards@therightimage.co.uk

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Facebook's Mobile Plan: Carrier Billing, Analytics For Apps Via Bango Deal?

8 Feb

paidContent:UK
Last week, we highlighted how Facebook is already using mobile devices for commercial services—enabling people to buy Facebook Credits and charge them directly to their mobile bills. Now, it’s increasingly looking like that may just be the beginning: today, UK-based mobile billing and analytics specialist Bango (AIM: BGO) announced that it had signed a deal to provide unspecified services to the social network.
This is a significant deal for Facebook on two separate fronts:
—It ties Facebook up with one of the bigger companies in the area of mobile billing: Bango is the payments provider for RIM’s App World, which yesterday once again laid claim to being the second-most profitable app storefront after Apple’s—largely because of the fact that it has a strong business in paid apps and that those apps are billed directly to users’ mobile bills in 34 countries. RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) yesterday claimed that 13 percent of its App World developers earn in excess of $100,000, which is massive considering how many developers earn next to nothing.
In December last year, Bango also secured a deal with Amazon.
Like the Facebook announcement that deal provided no detail about what it was that Bango would do for the company—although that, too, could be an opportunity for Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) to build carrier billing into its mobile apps. A spokesperson contacted today declined to comment on the details of either the Amazon or Facebook deals, although she did confirm that Amazon was an active customer.
The use of carrier billing also begs another question: for what? That could point to Facebook offering richer mobile services on its web platform and apps, such as paid content or the ability to pay for other goods and services, perhaps linked up with location-based deal offerings.
—The other significant side of Bango’s business is in the area of analytics for mobile web sites as well as apps. This is a service it already provides various high-profile publishers to help track how their content is used and consumed. That helps the publishers not only track what content “works” but also can be used to build profiles to sell advertising and marketing services.
If reports are true, that is another area where Facebook is going to have to start doing some serious tracking, too: the company is reportedly going to start inserting “sponsored stories” into mobile users’ feeds, which would represent Facebook’s first big foray into offering marketing services to brands since filing for its IPO last week—where it pointedly mentioned it had yet to start offering such revenue-generating services.
Facebook is holding an advertising confab at the end of this month—its first high-profile foray into wooing Madison Avenue—where it may well announce more details about how its mobile plans are progressing.
The other point to be made here is that it is interesting that Facebook is taking the road less traveled by companies like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and exploring routes to align itself with carriers as it expands what it does on mobile. It’s not the first time: Facebook has a whole swathe of non-smartphone users that can update their statuses by mobile; many of those feature phone Facebookers are using SMS, which also require carrier interconnections to operate.
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Music in the Morning with the iShower

8 Feb

Geek News Central

At last year’s CES, iDevices showed off the iGrill, a Bluetooth-enabled cooking thermometer. This year, they’re back with iShower, a waterproof speaker. Andy and Don tune in with Jonathan Conelias from iDevices.
As with the iGrill, the iShower is Bluetooth-enabled, playing audio from iOS, Android and Blackberry phones. In fact, any device that can stream music via Bluetooth will work with the iShower and up to five devices can be paired. Naturally the iShower is waterproof, making it suitable for the shower, swimming pool and beach. Buttons on the iShower can control the music, skipping backwards and forwards through the playlist.
The iShower’s rich sound speaker cuts through the noise of the shower and in good taste, there’s no microphone. If you were thinking of taking a phone call in the shower, think again. A mounting bracket is supplied and complementary accessories such as a mirror make this a complete shower solution.
The iShower will be available from March both online and in good retail stores with an MSRP of $99.99.
Interview by Andy McCaskey of SDR News and RV News Net, and Don Baine, the Gadget Professor.
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RIM: App World Is Now At 60,000 Apps; 13 Percent Of Publishers Earn $100k+

7 Feb

paidContent:UK
Research In Motion is undeniably on the ropes at the moment, with the mobile handset maker weathering a decline in global market share, delays on new products, and the departure of its co-CEOs/founders in the last month after several bad quarters. But at a developers’ conference that kicked off today in Amsterdam, the company’s new CEO, Thorsten Heins plus several others put on a brave face and laid out some milestones marking out where RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) is growing—a foundation, of sorts, for how the company hopes to build itself back up in the months ahead.
On a wider-market level, there is good reason for RIM to be hosting a developer conference in Europe: it’s a market where it has had some mixed success of late, but that includes some key wins: data from GfK last week indicated that, in fact, BlackBerry is the most-purchased device brand at the moment in the UK. (Others say Android was the most popular, and still others claim the iPhone ran away with the market.) Thorsten Heins, in his keynote today, noted that 65 percent of the population of Europe, Middle East and Africa are still using feature phones. And that, despite everything, still spells opportunity for RIM.
RIM today said that it now has 60,000 apps in its App World applications storefront—still miniscule compared to the millions that live collectively on the Android Market and Apple’s App Store—but a significant improvement on the 17,000 that were in App World last January. Collectively, the store has seen 2 billion downloads as of last month, with 6 million downloads per day.
The company’s VP of developer relations, Alec Saunders, also repeated a claim we’ve heard before from the company: after Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), AppWorld is the “most profitable” of mobile platforms. This is based on the company claiming to have more paid downloads than Android’s Market, where the vast majority of popular apps are free to download. Part of RIM’s approach has been to enable carrier billing to pay for app downloads—meaning that the apps get charged directly to a users’ bill. That is something that is still nascent on the Market. (Apple handles billing itself via iTunes.) RIM says that it has now enabled carrier billing in 34 different countries
What’s interesting is that Saunders also spelled out a bit of detail on how much money developers are making on the platform: apparently, 13 percent of all app publishers have made $100,000 or more through AppWorld. That detail sparked off some responses:
“On the other platforms, virtually no one covers their investment as anything more than a hobby,” one developer, Matt Baxter-Reynolds, tweeted to me earlier. “That metric is just not believable.” That kind of thinking underscores the idea that apps and app stores are really just there to drive more stickiness to a platform and encourage more hardware sales.
But another raised the point that in fact RIM most likely attracts a different kind of app maker than those who have swarmed to iOS and Android. “I’d say [that is] reasonable,” noted another developer, Shaun Austin. “BB doesn’t seem a platform as likely to attract hobbyists in the way Android/iOS does.”
Of the apps that are selling best, four out of the top 10 on App World are games for the PlayBook tablet, RIM said. You can read that as a vote for engagement for a tablet that has been less than successful against the iPad and Android-based tablet makers.
Last week, RIM released an updated SDK for the BBM Social Platform, a newish area the company has been exploring, leveraging the wide usage it already has for its BlackBerry Messenger service. Today it noted that it now has 50 million people engaging on that platform through various apps, with the most-used of them being the BlackBerry version of Wikitude, an augmented-reality search app.
Looking ahead, it’s products like the BBM Social Platform that are perhaps where RIM should be putting more of its focus: it is, after all, an experience that is unique to RIM and helps set it apart from other handset makers. The company is gearing up for two significant platform updates in the months ahead, with BlackBerry 10 for handsets and PlayBook 2.0 for the tablet, and all eyes will be on how dynamic and easy these will be to use in creating services. RIM has already said that it will be looking for close integration of the BBM Social Platform with BlackBerry 10, which will the see the company doing more in social gaming on the OS.
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Advanced Health & Care launches community healthcare system

7 Feb

ResponseSource Press Release Wire

‘Advanced Community’ is the first community healthcare system focused on delivering mobile working

Advanced Health & Care (Advanced) today announces the launch of ‘Advanced Community’. This is the first system designed specifically for community healthcare that has mobile working at its core.

Advanced Community has been designed for use by community healthcare providers across a wide range of services and builds on Advanced’s existing systems, which are already widely used in community settings.

Advanced Community delivers integrated care in the community and includes comprehensive core functionality such as referral management, care planning, assessments, patient records, bed management and appointment booking.

The system also includes purpose built mobile applications and mobile workforce management solutions, enabling the secure recording and reporting of patient information from anywhere and at any time, even when a mobile signal is unavailable. Care workers can deliver care assessments and care plans, effectively manage treatment and ‘clock in and out’ of appointments - all via Advanced’s iNurse and iConnect mobile applications.

Jim Chase, Managing Director of Advanced Health & Care says, “Advanced Community is sophisticated, flexible and unique in its approach to integrated community healthcare. As over 70 per cent of community staff work away from their offices, the system has been designed from the ground up to facilitate mobile working, thereby helping to solve the community healthcare sector’s primary day-to-day operational issue - managing a mobile and distributed workforce.”

Using Advanced Community, referrals can be easily routed to the right service and the integrated iNurse patient management system safely receives, records and communicates patient care information via handheld Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices, considerably improving efficiency. Android tablet and Smartphone options will be available shortly.

Advanced’s iConnect delivers real-time task lists and care recipient data to care workers via their near field communication (NFC) enabled mobile phones. Appointment arrival and departure times are automatically recorded by swiping these phones against radio frequency identification (RFID) tags positioned inside patients’ homes.

Advanced Community works alongside Advanced’s Adastra 111, minor injuries, Single Point of Access, GP out-of-hours and other unscheduled care services. It also enables access to GP primary care records, the Advanced End-of-Life Care Register and the Summary Care Record while supporting a wide range of integrations and messaging to primary and secondary healthcare IT systems.

Chase adds, “We are the only software provider to offer such a robust, integrated and truly mobile solution for the community healthcare market, providing the ideal platform for safe, efficient and cost-effective care in the community.”

-ENDS-

Notes to Editor

About Advanced Health & Care

Advanced Health & Care is a leading supplier of IT management systems for urgent & unplanned care, homecare, residential care, hospices, mobile information for community carers and back-office management systems for NHS trusts, local authorities and care providers.

Working with partners in the NHS, local government and the private sector, Advanced Health & Care is delivering IT solutions in support of safe, efficient care delivery with integrated management information. Advanced’s unique proposition is its range of integrated care solutions offering visibility of information for both the commissioner and care provider.

The Advanced Health & Care suite of products includes: Adastra, CareSys, Crosscare, Smart Business Suite, iConnect, iNurse, Advanced End-of-Life Care Register, Saturn & StaffPlan.

Over 1000 care provider organisations use IT solutions from Advanced Health & Care. Additionally, across the Advanced Computer Software Group, over 1,000 customers use Advanced’s software applications in cloud environments meaning that Advanced Health & Care is ideally placed to deliver cloud-based Adastra.

Contact us

Unit 4 Eurogate Business Park I Ashford I Kent I TN24 8SB t: +44 (0)1233 722 700 f: +44 (0)1233 722 701

e: ahcmarketing@advancedcomputersoftware.com www.advancedcomputersoftware.com/ahc

Press Contacts:

Liz Ebbrell and Angela Mycock, Advanced Computer Software Group

pr@advancedcomputersoftware.com

+44(0)1625 856505

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BlackBerry PlayBook sees further price cuts

6 Feb

EE Times - Cleanterra

The Blackberry Playbook has seen yet another price cut, as Research in Motion Inc. (RIM) tries to sell off its remaining stock in the face of fierce competition from its rival and twin, the Amazon Kindle Fire.

View the full article HERE.

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Only 8.5% Of Internet Usage Comes Via Mobiles, Double Last Year's Figure

6 Feb

paidContent:UK
When you read the headlines of how ubiquitous smartphones are becoming, and how in some countries the mobile device is overtaking the PC in terms of internet access, you would think that mobile internet usage would directly follow from these facts. In reality, it seems that it still lagging behind: according to some figures out today from StatCounter, only 8.5 percent of internet visits came from mobile devices in 2011.
StatCounter’s figure, which does not include tablet usage, is still nearly double the mobile figure from 2010, when mobile devices accounted for 4.3 percent of internet usage. In 2009, mobiles accounted for only 1.6 percent of visits. It also comes as internet access via desktop PCs appears to be on the wane:
Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Mobile vs. Desktop Market Share
Yet even given the growth in mobile, these still-low figures also go some way to explaining why certain businesses, like mobile advertising, are still not the money spinners you would expect them to be: the usage volumes are just simply not there yet.
StatCounter also provided some numbers on which handset makers are bringing in the most internet usage country-by-country. Nokia (NYSE: NOK)—which, despite its many declines over several quarters, has managed to remain the world’s biggest smartphone maker—is the global leader in terms of internet access via mobile devices. That is partly because it is strong in those countries where users may be opting for phones instead of PCs to go online, such as China and India.
It will be interesting to see whether Nokia can hold on to that lead, both in internet usage and in smartphone leadership given its switch to Windows Phone for its smartphones—especially if you believe reports that Nokia is planning to discontinue Symbian after the development of one more device. Symbian is currently the company’s best-selling platform and although it has now been outsourced to Accenture, Nokia has said it would remain committed to it until 2016.
Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), which NPD earlier today noted is the most popular vendor in terms of smartphone sales in the U.S., is also leading in mobile internet usage in the U.S., as well as the UK, markets where it has also performed very strongly in terms of sales. Worldwide, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) appears to be taking a nosedive at the moment. You can see other country-specific vendor rankings in the embedded table here:
Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Mobile Vendor (Beta) Market Share
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PrivacyStar Blocks Unwanted Smartphone Calls

6 Feb

Geek News Central

As on-line marketers transfer their cold-calling attention away from land-lines to cell and mobile phones, their calls are becoming increasingly an annoyance when you are out-and-about. PrivacyStar offers a multilayered solution for Android and Blackberry to cut unwanted calls. Andy finds out more.
PrivacyStar is a smartphone app to block unwanted calls and SMS texts. At its simplest, user-specified phone numbers can be blocked to prevent calls or texts coming through and bothering you. The app also features SmartBlocking which blocks the top 25 numbers blocked by other users in the past week, so if there’s a major calling campaign on, those numbers pretty quickly get blocked.
Other features include CallerID lookup, where if the phone doesn’t know who is calling, the app consults with an on-line directory and displays the caller. For really persistent callers, complaints can be filed directly with the FTC.
The app is currently only available for Android and Blackberry, an iPhone version will be released before the summer. The app is free for a week and then $2.99 per month after that.
Interview by Andy McCaskey of SDR News and RV News Net.
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Blackberry Apps Development in its All Time Low: RIM in the Rescue Phase

5 Feb

ArticlesBase

This article talks about Blackberry's current stage and its future strategies to recover and its constantly changing management, analysts believe RIM is not getting anywhere.

Read more over at www.articlesbase.com
Betfair revamps its iPad app after strong mobile gambling growth

3 Feb

www.guardian.co.uk - sport
Betting exchange may weave mobile-specific social and location features into its apps in the future
Betfair has relaunched its iPad app in response to what it says is strong demand from its customers for more tablet-focused features and interface.
The app, which is now live in Apple's App Store, makes it faster for customers to place bets on currently-popular sporting events, while also drilling down into other sports, and quickly depositing and withdrawing funds from their accounts.
The update comes after a strong year of mobile growth for the betting exchange. In its last set of interim financial results, covering the six months to 31 October 2011, Betfair said that more than £800m was traded through its mobile service, up 96% year-on-year.
That resulted in £9.1m of revenues for Betfair itself – 7.3% of its overall exchange revenue. The company now has more than 160,000 active mobile users, who placed 16.2m bets in that six-month period from within its apps and mobile site.
Betfair now has a 60-person team working specifically on mobile, up from 5-10 two years ago according to head of product Anil Bhagchandani. The investment appears to be paying off.
"Not only are people moving over from website to mobile, but there is incremental value from that," he says. "Customers who were purely website and who then start using mobile almost always stay longer, bet more and have a higher ARPU."
Betfair's mobile ambitions started with an app for J2ME handsets, but it has since launched apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry, as well as the HTML5 site.
"For most of the last year, we were trying to get apps across each of the platforms roughly as functional as each other and the website," says director of technology Phil Dixon.
""We may now take one or two of the platforms and begin to experiment and explore. iPad might explore different usage paradigms, for example, and on Android we may have a bit more flexibility to try different navigation."
The new iPad app is a good example, developed in response to detailed feedback from Betfair's tablet-owning customers – Apps Blog sat behind the one-way glass at the company's focus-testing room in its London headquarters to watch one "VIP" user say in no uncertain terms what was lacking in its previous tablet apps, and how he'd like to use the updated version.
Dixon says Betfair is firm about not taking sides in the native apps versus HTML5 debate – it's investing in both – and adds that the company's API is likely to play an important role in future growth.
Developers can build their own apps using the API that tie into the Betfair exchange, with a handful available by the end of 2011, with more on the way. Android app ZoomBet is one prominent example, with its focus on speedy betting.
"Because we don't have an adversarial relationship with our punters, it's in our interests to broaden the ecosystem as much as we can with the API," says director of technology Phil Dixon.
"We figured people are going to have niche ideas that we would never have or never pursue. The more apps out there that are very specifically relevant to consumers, the better."
Betfair is also considering how it can make more use of mobile-specific features in its apps in 2012 and beyond, with location and social aspects to the fore in its thinking.
"My view is that the mobile is similar to what the exchange did to the web in 2000: there is going to be this game-changing way of betting which no one has figured out yet," says Bhagchandani.
Outside the gambling industry, the key game-changer right now appears to be social: witness how Facebook is encouraging several industries to adopt its idea of frictionless sharing.
However, making more of social is a thornier task for companies like Betfair. It's an inherently social service, in that it matches strangers with opposing views on the same sporting event, but its customers may not all be champing at the bit to share their activity with friends and family.
"There is a powerful angle there, but I don't know what it is yet," says Dixon. "It's probably not streaming all my bets out to my Facebook feed! There are too many reasons why that's wrong. And Facebook has not really engaged with gambling, although that's changing."
However, he adds that splicing social and location features could have great potential for a sports-betting service in particular, possibly inspired by the check-in mechanic popularised by Foursquare and Facebook in recent times.
"Think if you were in a stadium, and you knew that 2,000 people there were having a punt on Chelsea right now. Or if you walk past a pub and you're an Arsenal fan, and 14 people are there having a punt on the match, would you like to join them?" he says, by way of illustration how this might work for Betfair.
Stuart Dredge

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