Latest Industry News

February 27, 2017 by Julie McGrath

Nokia’s 3310 phone has been relaunched nearly 17 years after its debut.

Many consider the original handset iconic because of its popularity and sturdiness. More than 126 million were produced before it was phased out in 2005.

The revamped version will be sold under licence by the Finnish start-up HMD Global, which also unveiled several Nokia-branded Android smartphones.

One expert said it was a “fantastic way” to relaunch Nokia’s phone brand.

“The 3310 was the first mass-market mobile and there’s a massive amount of nostalgia and affection for it,” commented Ben Wood from the technology consultancy CCS Insight.

“If HMD had just announced three Android devices they would have barely got a couple of column inches in the press.

“So, the 3310 is a very clever move and we expect it will sell in significant volumes.”

Check out what Nokia’s CEO has to say about it HERE!

The announcement was made ahead of the start of the Mobile World Congress tech show in Barcelona. LG, Huawei and Lenovo are among others to have unveiled new devices.

Nokia no longer makes phones itself, but manufactures telecoms equipment, Ozo virtual reality cameras, and health kit under the Withings brand.

Long life

The new 3310 qualifies as a “feature phone” rather than a smartphone as it only provides limited internet facilities.

It relies on 2.5G connectivity – which has slower data speeds than 3G or 4G – and is powered by the S30+ operating system, which allows web browsing but has a much smaller range of apps than Android or iOS. Its single camera is also restricted to two megapixels.

However, its advantage over more powerful handsets is its battery life. HMD says the colour-screened phone has up to a month’s standby time and delivers more than 22 hours of talk time.

It also comes with the modern version of the classic game Snake preinstalled. Its launch price is £41.51

Yes, the reboot of the Nokia 3310 is fun – and perhaps there is a huge audience for a return to a time when all you could do with a phone was make calls and play Snake.

But make no mistake, if this piece of nostalgia is the future of the Nokia brand then it is doomed. And of course the smart team at HMD Global know that. They haven’t built partnerships with Foxconn, Google and hundreds of operators around the world on the promise of a return to the 2G past.

It is phones like the Nokia 6 – apparently already selling well in China – which are key to any hopes of making the Finnish brand a force to be reckoned with again. But of course yet another slab of metal and glass running Android was never going to excite the analysts and journalists tired of overblown launches where the words “awesome” and “revolutionary” are thrown around like confetti.

Hence the decision to remind us of Nokia’s glorious past, where everyone seemed to have a phone with that familiar ringtone and nobody was asking to borrow a charger to get them through the day. A stroke of marketing genius then – but a risky strategy.

If the phone-buying public one now sees Nokia as a retro brand rather one which has been reinvigorated for the 4 and 5G future, then HMD may come to regret its 3310 gimmick.

– EverythingApplePro

– BBC

February 17, 2017 by Julie McGrath

10 Digital Marketing Trends for 2017, and why we need to be paying attention to the evolution of technology.

We have predicted The 10 biggest digital marketing trends for 2017 along with the help of some experts. We have taken a year’s worth of reading and research, along with advice from the experts & looked at the developments that seem to be gaining traction, and extrapolated some predictions for 2017.

1. Immersive Marketing

The success of content marketing has been a mixed bag. It has given consumers entertaining, informative content. It has also seen a lot of rushed content published in the race to expand content volumes.

This increased competition has seen market leaders and innovators look for new ways to engage their audience, and developments in various technologies are helping to drive this phenomenon.

Both Facebook and YouTube have introduced 360-degree video, and some brands have already begun experimenting with the format for an interesting and innovative experience. Take a look at this 360-degree promo for Star Wars: Rogue One, or this effort from GoPro.

Following on from the success of Pokemon Go, Pepsi developed an augmented reality ad. There have been some innovative, interactive campaigns on Snapchat this year, with sponsored filters being an obvious route.Marketing campaigns that push the boundaries like this cannot be universal, but it will be interesting to see how marketers continue to experiment in 2017. Live video can play a part in creating an immersive video too…

2. More Live Video

Live video has suddenly become the internet’s favorite shiny new toy. When Meerkat entered the market it was an entertaining novelty. Now, Twitter (via Periscope), Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram have all released live video offerings as well.

Many of these networks are promoting their live video quite heavily, and it’s something that will stand out in the saturated world of content, so I can see plenty of reasons why brands would want to get involved.

An early example was BuzzFeed’s live stream of two employees trying to explode a watermelon using rubber bands. The video has had a total of 11 million views.

I also expect the two worlds of live video and influencers to collide in 2017, with product placement and sponsorships becoming a regular feature of influencer videos.

3. Big Data

Big data has been around for a few years now, but getting the most out of all this data is still a challenge to many.

Market research firm Ovum estimates the big data market will increase from £1.3 billion in 2016 to £7.5 billion by 2020. As businesses mature and put new structures and roles in place, big data will begin to become increasingly useful and utilised.

Big data is becoming increasingly widely used. It is said to have played a large part in the outcome of the US election. Trumps marketing teams analysis knew where to focus fundraising efforts, target ‘persuadables’, and increase spend. The data was even used to deliver 4,000 individual digital ads. This messaging was continually tested and refined.

4. Increased Personalisation

Big data can have a variety of uses, one of them being personalised customer experience and marketing. The personalisation of Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify show how data can be used to improve the customer experience. This level of one-to-one marketing will slowly become more prevalent as brands weigh opportunity and cost and find ways of introducing it into their messaging.

In marketing, data has been used for the lighthearted but enjoyable campaigns such as Spotify’s “Thanks 2016, It’s been weird”, to Chelsea football club’s search for a new sponsor, which was a highly personalised campaign

5. Native Advertising

While native advertising may be an old method, market forces should increase its prominence in 2017. The diminishing penetration of many ads – through ad blockers, reduced social media organic reach, and the decline of banner ads – will see an increase of native advertising.

The Guardian newspaper has recently updated its native advertising platform to help brands find a home for their content. As Adam Foley, commercial strategy director, says “we have answered a genuine industry problem faced by advertisers and agencies who create their own branded content and struggle with a suitable home.”

6. Digital marketing trends that are on the list every year but still deserve to be there:

Mobile first

Probably on every digital marketing trends list since mobile phones first had internet capabilities, the relentless increase of users accessing the web through mobile means its importance continues.

In fact, this year there were two important markers for mobile: Google announcing a mobile-first web index, and the fact that mobile traffic has overtaken desktop for internet usage.

7. AR & VR

The progress is probably slower than people would like, as this is another trend that’s been on many a list. I’ve even talked about it in this post, and I do believe its use will increase, but it is unlikely to develop beyond a niche market in 2017. We have embraced it already with our very own Virtual Reality Google Cardboard Headset! We want to make recruitment an ‘Experience’ that can be seen and felt across many different platforms. Based on the feedback from our candidates its proving to be a real hit and something we will explore further this year!

8. More video

It feels like my entire Facebook feed is already taken up by video, but I’m sure there is room for more. Facebook has driven profits by embracing video, and is likely to continue. Twitter are banking on broadcasting football games to boost their revenue. It seems we can’t get enough of video, so expect the powers that be to serve up even more.

9. The Internet of Things

There are billions of connected devices, from thermostats to smart cars. And yet, the biggest Internet of Things news this year was the massive DDoS attack in October caused by weaponizing low-security connected devices.

The Internet of Things has some exciting early uses. There are industries that are seeing a lot of value from IoT, but for most people it’s a slow crawl. Developments will continue to creep into our lives, but it feels like people are expecting too much too soon.

10 . Wearables

The tech will improve, the prices will go down, and more people will embrace wearables. I just can’t see it becoming a mainstream concern by the time the year is out. Having said that, usage will slowly continue to rise.

Those are our predictions for the biggest digital marketing trends for 2017. If none of them come to fruition we can break out the Tarot cards next year.

January 9, 2017 by Julie McGrath

5 Surprising Marketing Predictions for 2017 – and What We’ve Learned from 2016!

2016 has been an exciting year full of unexpected booms and busts in the marketing and technology world, making us look toward 2017 with eager anticipation. So what predictions came true and which ones started with a bang, but ultimately fizzled out? Let’s take a closer look:

1. Blended Marketing Continued to Dominate in 2016

To the surprise of no one who monitors these kinds of things, mobile marketing continued to dominate the web as predicted back at the end of 2015. However, just as the incredible rise of ad blockers on the web has filtered out much of the advertising noise, so too are consumer bombarded by omni-channel offers that don’t really meet their needs, or happen at inopportune times.

As a result, consumers are being much more selective about the apps they install, the sites they visit and the emails they receive. If you’re not doing enough to stay at the top of their minds in ways that aren’t intrusive, you’re giving yourself a one-way ticket to UnsubscribeLand.

This is why many businesses look at omni-channel as more risk than reward. Do you really want to be everywhere the customer is all the time? Does the customer want you to be? Are you more of an elegant butterfly in their minds, or a pesky fly? If you don’t take the time to refine and chart your marketing course appropriately, they’ll make that decision for you.

Social media and mobile media continued to blur the lines with integrated shopping, recommendations, videos and reviews – creating an even greater push to get noticed among the amalgamated chunk of product pitches, retargeting ads and “I’m-an-authority-look-at-me” videos. As more and more advertisers step up to the plate, they look at what others are doing and then copy their efforts – rather than test on their own to see what their unique audience would respond to.

And, in an effort to get in on this big, blended push, Google shifted its search results to include video, recent news, location information and other details to help match the user with their search request even faster and more thoroughly than before.

So if everything’s coming together in a more finely-tuned customer experience, what didn’t really take off as well as we expected it to?

2. From Lifestyle Apps to Augmented Reality

Originally predicted that 2016 would see the rise and greater adoption of lifestyle apps – meaning apps that people installed as a reflection of who they were. These could be a combination fitness-weather-diet tracker app rather than having apps for all three of these items. But the looming spectre of data overages constantly nipping at their heels means developers have tended to go easy on what’s available via app versus the much more open and accommodating web.

What stirred everyone’s imagination was augmented reality. The undisputed summer hit was Pokemon Go, but it, too, failed to gain much traction after the initial buzz wore off. Still, it was a masterpiece of gamification and as mobile becomes more powerful, we can look forward to seeing what augmented reality can do – particularly when you’re able to bring together the aforementioned apps into an all-in-one experience that isn’t just helpful, but subtly addictive too.

3. Talk To Me – Dash Buttons and the Internet of Things

Voice-guided search, wearable devices and innovations like the Amazon Echo and Google Home are starting to bridge the gap between the internet you access on your computer, and the internet you access everywhere.

Awkward attempts to blend e-commerce with that always-on, on-demand functionality has come out in the form of Amazon Dash buttons – WiFi connected devices that let you instantly order your favorite household products, but they’re more of a novelty than a really useful and innovative design.

What will be changing for marketers is an increasing investment in understanding analytics and getting a truly cross-channel view of the consumer. Rather than throwing out a bunch of things that the company “thinks” the customer might want, they’re finally gathering enough intelligence (and enough of an understanding to know what to do with it), that they can track a consumer from a search on their home computer to a product description page on their mobile phone, to an order form on their company laptop.

This is known as advanced attribution, and it’s going to change the way we market to customers in ways we probably can’t even imagine. But think of the potential of engaging that consumer at the right time and place, on the right device, when they’re at the right stage of the buying cycle, and you can see precisely how much of a game-changer this technology is.

4. A Bigger Focus on Tools and Services that Fill in the Gaps

Things like predictive analytics and personalisation tools are great – but they’re mostly in a vacuum. That means you can’t really leverage them to see the big picture, as well as the granular details you need in order to make decisions with confidence.

Expect innovations in 2017 to help bridge the gaps with many of these services, allowing for greater integrations with existing systems and a better, visual picture of what all that information really means.

Other types of services that are not even part of the analytics industry are popping up to fill in the empty spaces left by other innovators. Uber, Airbnb, Amazon Echo/Google Home and many other services like these are becoming ubiquitous in our lifestyle because of the service they provide — a service we never even knew we needed until we saw its potential.

Tools like these are poised to change the way we market on the web, and you can expect even more integrations with popular software and SaaS products to broaden their reach and capabilities.

5. The Power and Passion of Social Media – Who Decides What You Get to See?

Although this doesn’t just apply to marketing, the U.S. election was watched, dissected, ranted and raved over across social media platforms. So much so, that “fake news” and allegations started littering people’s news feeds.

But this then begs the question – should you encapsulate yourself in a bubble – seeing only what you want to see, or should companies give you a little bit of everything and let you choose accordingly? Who decides? Social media has a very powerful and passionate audience on its side – and a significant amount of data that it’s going to have to make some definitive and perhaps unexpected decisions on. After all, not offering a balance can affect user engagement, and losing user engagement is the one thing that no social network wants to imagine.

You can keep up to date will all of the latest industry news and local jobs by following us on our social media platforms. Say hello on Facebook , Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn.

– Sherice Jacob

January 4, 2017 by Julie McGrath

Discover 5 Amazing Advantages of using CSS for your website!

When you create a website for your business, time and money are likely to be major concerns. Luckily, there is a web design method that can help you save time and money while also improving your visitor’s experience. Cascading Style Sheets, more commonly known as CSS, has fast become the preferred web design method for the benefits it offers web designers and website visitors alike.

What is CSS?

CSS is the key presentational technology that is used in website design.

Before it’s development, nearly all of the presentational attributes of HTML documents were contained within the HTML markup; all font colors, background styles, element alignments, borders and sizes had to be explicitly described, within the HTML.

As a result of, development of large web sites, where fonts and colour information were repeatedly added to every single page, became a long and expensive process.

CSS solve these problems, by allowing web designers to move much of that formatting information to a separate style sheet resulting in considerably simpler HTML markup.

Origin

HTML was originally designed as a simple way of presenting information intended for sharing scientific documents and research papers online.

Later on, as the Internet expanded from the academic and research world into the mainstream, and became more media oriented, the presentation of the web pages has become considerably important for a website’s success.

To improve web presentation capabilities CSS was introduced by World Wide Web consortium’s (W3C). It was intended to allow web designers to define the look and feel of their web pages, and to separate content from document’s layout.

Advantages

The biggest advantage of CSS is that it allows separating content of an html document from the style and layout of that document. It can thus make documents much easier to maintain and give much better control over the layout of your web pages, because content of an entire set of HTML pages can be easily controlled using one or more style sheets. Check out 5 additional advantages for CSS below:

Lots of time will be saved — Lots of flexibility is given to set the properties of an element. You can write it once; and then the same code can be applied to the groups of HTML elements, and can also be reused in multiple HTML pages.

Easy maintenance — It provides an easy means to update document formatting and maintain consistency across multiple documents. By making one change to the website’s CSS, elements in all the web pages will be updated automatically.

Pages load faster — CSS enable multiple pages to share formatting, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content. It significantly reduces the file transfer size, which results in a faster page loading.

Superior styles to HTML — CSS has much wider presentation capabilities than HTML, so you can give far better look to your HTML pages in comparison to the HTML presentational elements and attributes.

Multiple Device Compatibility — CSS can also allow the HTML document to be optimised for more than one type of device or media. Using CSS the same HTML document can be presented in different viewing styles for different rendering devices such as computer screen, mobile phones, printer, etc.

If you found this article interesting, check out our latest Software Development job vacancy by clicking here! It may be just right for you!

– TutorialRepublic

– NetworkSolutions

December 3, 2016 by Julie McGrath

The next evolution of mobile data could be the last step-change we see in mobile data transmission – but when will 4G switch to 5G?

Mobile data use has rocketed over the past five years – increasing 74 per cent alone in 2015 – taking the overall global figure to around 3.7 exabytes per month. This will increase even further when 5G is released.

Underpinning this explosion is the growth of streaming services, both audio and video, and people’s growing use of apps – all underwritten by the expectation of having a high-speed data connection at all times, even when away from Wi-Fi.

With 4G now entrenched as a global standard for our immediate future in developed markets, it is set to be usurped by 5G, but what does that mean for you? In short: faster speeds and more capacity, due to a more resilient network.

What is 5G?

Next-generation mobile networks are expected to handle much more data volume, connect many more devices, significantly reduce latency and bring new levels of reliability.

5G has been designed to meet these needs by pooling bandwidth to boost range and speed.

How much faster is 5G compared to 4G?

At first, 5G will likely average speeds of 100Mbps, which isn’t a huge step up from the maximum for networks already using LTE-Advanced, which tend to deliver download speeds of between 30-50Mbps in real-world conditions. In lab conditions, the technology most widely in use today can handle up to a theoretical maximum of 150Mbps. This maximum depends on the category of the device and connection, however. Category 4 LTE maxes out at 150Mbps, but Cat 9 goes up to a theoretical maximum of 450Mbps.

Just to confuse things a little further, due to the technical definitions of wireless technologies – and the lack of a universal standard – you could see LTE-Advanced marketed as 5G, or 4G+, or LTE-Advanced+ or by some other as yet undefined name. In summary, it’s a marked improvement but the exact numbers will vary.

How is it so much faster?

4G LTE-Advanced, 5G or whatever else you want to call it splits the data into bands, each of which has its own particular bandwidth limitations. By aggregating these different bands and pooling the bandwidth (essentially), the end-user should get speeds far closer to 100Mbps and beyond as the technology develops.

5G, however, could be the last step-change in mobile technology, with some predicting a more additive and iterative upgrade process would remove the need for a full jump to ‘6G’. The current process is one of evolution (rather than revolution) for both hardware and software, but one that’s aiming at a potential 100 times increase in speeds… eventually.

Who is working to introduce 5G to the masses?

Nokia recently took a step closer to 5G mobile networks by announcing it is bringing 4.5G Pro to mobile operators by the end of 2016. According to the firm, 4.5G Pro delivers ten times the speeds of conventional 4G networks, allowing network operators to offer peak speeds of one gigabit (1,000 megabits) per second.

Although the Finnish firm hasn’t announced a release date yet, Nokia is also poised to release 4.9G in the ‘near future’ – an upgrade which it says will push data speeds to several gigabits per second.

In the US, AT&T and Verizon have begun trialing 5G across a controlled number of sites and will roll this trial out further over the next decade, starting in 2017. The trial and roll out formed part of the Obama administration’s Advanced Wireless Research Initiative led by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

More recently, Ericsson and Orange announced they are working on the development and test of selected 5G use cases based on Orange’s network, using Ericsson 5G technology.

The partnership will enable so-called “5G technology building blocks”, proof of concepts, and pilots across Europe from 2017 onwards. These include wireless multi-gigabits internet access, “ultra large mobile coverage solutions” and connected cars.

As well as Orange, Ericsson is partnering with NTT DOCOMO and Intel to build a 5G trial environment in central Tokyo, starting next year. The purpose of the trials is to test use case applications and radio performance. Ericsson will provide 5G end-to-end systems including 5G radio and core networks, and Intel will contribute its chipset in user devices.

The trial will be conducted using the 28GHz frequency band; a candidate band which the Japanese government is considered designating for use by commercial 5G networks in Japan.

What about in the UK?

The UK Chancellor, Philip Hammond, announced a commitment to 5G in the recent Autumn Statement in November. He has dedicated around £740m to be used for the development of 5G, but mentioned no set launch date for the 5G service.

And when can we expect it to arrive?

As it stands now, 5G is expected to start rolling out globally sometime in 2020, with Ovum’s figures suggesting there will be 24 million 5G subscribers by 2021. It says that less than 10 per cent of those connections will be in Europe though. It could be even fewer than that if operators follow through on threats to delay 5G rollouts if strong net neutrality laws are adopted.

Europe lagging a little behind isn’t too surprising – countries like South Korea have been considering the specifications, implementation and deployment of 5G since as far back as 2008. Previously, UK networks like a EE were looking at a 2022 time-frame for deploying the new standard; though that could theoretically move forward a little, it’s unlikely to be by much.

A formalised standard should be in place by 2018 ahead of early rollouts in 2020 – but as of now, there’s no single definition. This leads to a potential problem for both business and users.

To try to side-step some of these issues (largely incompatible hardware issues) various interested parties (handset manufacturers, the 3GPP and others) around the world are working together to ensure a non-fragmented user experience when it does arrive.

Elsewhere, Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia and Qualcomm recently announced the formation of the “5G Automotive Association”.

The goal is to address the issues around connected mobility and road safety with apps including connected automated driving, access to services and integration into smart cities and intelligent transports.

What is causing the delay?

The main reason for ensuring global compatibility is that otherwise devices made for one country won’t necessarily work on the same spectrum bands in other countries. This is particularly vital for the success of the Internet of Things (IoT) and connected-devices in general; each of them will need a low-latency, high-capacity, and highly reliable connection to truly reach their potential.

The concession to this point of harmonisation is that LTE-Advanced/5G should be backwards compatible, provided the right groundwork is laid down ahead of the rollouts. For example, a device that supports Cat 4LTE, but not faster Cat9 will still use LTE-Advanced technology, but won’t get the full benefits of that carrier aggregation. It’ll still be a whole lot better than current 4G (and most certainly 3G) speeds though.

With live deployments not yet under way and technical terms still not yet defined, there’s still time for everything to change again before 5G actually arrives – and of course, there’s still time to introduce another completely new acronym.

If you found this article interesting, check out our ‘Latest Industry News’ page for more Technology insights. You can view it by clicking on this link!

– Ben Woods

November 29, 2016 by Julie McGrath

PHP is a popular server-side scripting language for the web and has common use in many IT Jobs

Generally, PHP is used to add a functionality to websites that HTML alone can’t achieve. There are many IT Jobs which require PHP knowledge as a key skill. But what is PHP capable of and what are the main functions in which someone seeking IT Jobs involving PHP be familiar with? Here are some examples:

Performs Calculations

PHP can perform all types of calculations, from figuring out what day it is or what day of the week a date in the very distant future will be, to performing all types of mathematical equations. In PHP, math expressions are made up of operators and operands. Basic math addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are done using mathematical operators. The large number of math functions are part of the PHP core. No installation is required to use them.

Collects User Information

Using PHP, you can let your user directly interact with the script. This can be something really simple, like collecting the temperature from the user that they want to convert from degrees to another format, or it can be more extensive information, like adding their information to an address book, letting them post on a forum or participate in a survey.

Interacts With MySQL Databases

PHP is particularly good at interacting with MySQL databases, which opens endless possibilities. You can write user-submitted information to a database, and you can retrieve information from the database. This allows you to create pages on the fly using the contents of the database. You can even perform complex tasks like setting up login systems, creating website search features, or store product catalogues and inventories online.

You can also use PHP and MySQL to set up an automated picture gallery to showcase products.

Creates Graphics with GD Library

Use the GD Library that is bundled with PHP to create simple graphics on the fly or to edit existing graphics. You might want to resize images, rotate them, change them to grayscale, or make thumbnails of them. Practical applications allow users to edit their avatars or generate CAPTCHA verifications. You can also create dynamic graphics that are always changing such as dynamic Twitter signatures.

Works With Cookies

Cookies are used to identify a user and store the user’s preferences as given on the site so the information doesn’t have to be re-entered each time the user visits the site. The cookie is a small file embedded on the user’s computer. Using the programming language, you can create, modify and delete cookies and retrieve cookie values.

Are you seeking IT Jobs which involve working with PHP in a professional environment? Keep an eye on our vacancy page for the latest featured IT Jobs updates. Visit it by clicking here!

– Angela Bradley