You probably shared a photo or two in the last 24 hours. If you’re like any normal power user, you’ve got a lot of different options to do that. For mobile email users, this hasn’t always been the most simple process.

The development team at My.com that work on the myMail app have introduced to their very large Mail.ru userbase a significantly easier way to send and forward photos. They took apart their existing mail app workflow and changed it into a much easier, faster process.

A Time Centric User Interface Brought To Emailing Photos

When you think about what you don’t like about it, it’s probably got something to do with including data other than the body of the message. Attachments, whether from your computer or from someone else’s email, are easily disorganized inside an email app.

So, when the guy’s at myMail sat down, they wanted to think of a way to completely solve this frustration. The first thing they did was sit down and develop a baseline for how the most popular email apps send photos.

Apple’s native email client takes 18 taps to attach 3 photos, Gmail’s mobile email app takes 15 taps to attach 3 photos. Not something you should be wasting time on, right?

People will start leaving an app that takes 18 taps to do something simple.

With an overall focus on saving time, the myMail got their app down to 5 taps to include photos in the app. They did that through a deep dive into what steps they could take out, and using new iterations on the staff.

Here’s the major things that made a difference:

• Understanding the user-interface
• Adding autosuggestion features
• Compressing images before sending
• Specific experience design updates
• In email preview images added
• Larger icons

And here’s how the preview looks now.

Market Implications & Resurgence Of ‘New Email”

Email has seen a recent surge of user acquisition and is actually beating social media acquisition overall, and specifically with mobile apps, the trend is now moving away from native apps.

Third party apps are acquiring a lot of clients because of the ability to be agile with different mail services, include a better scheduling interface and be social with files easily.

This new email style looks a lot more like chat, along with all of the features of business user needs.

Between these and other third party apps that approach scheduling, chatting, and calendars, email is changing as we know it. The good news is, developers are starting to design based on our ever-moving work lifestyles.

Email is Still The Primary Way People Share Information

As a related, but influenced, industry, let’s take email marketing as the example. Because of segments in security, age differences, territory, million of people share photos via email, and mobile clients will start losing userbase if it’s difficult to do.

How Email Will Change In The Future

Since everything in technologies history points to being more pervasive, seamless and quick, email will be the same. Think hardware and software here. In areas of our lives that we can interact, we should be able to.

It will become more wearable and built in. It’s on your wrist already, but where else could it go? Dermal displays or cochlear implants? Probably so.

There will also be an advancement of Natural Language Processing where the spoken word and written word will come together to make composing something even more simple. Thoughts on paper. Whoever helps us speed this process up will win in the biggest user base and will see other implications of social impact.

Email as we know it may look totally different, with a more widespread focus on communication as a whole, and time saving areas like:

1. Finding documents
2. Discovery areas
3. Conversation initiation
4. Consumption

Doing this will user in other players, much like how myMail has tackled letting its customer base use any mail box they want, and still processing their interface with the myMail brand.

For now, updates like shorter task solutions, like this one from myMail, start rolling the future out. For now, we’ve got a much easier way to send business and social photos.

Exeter-based company Nexus, which also provides Cloud services, has looked into developments in terms of Cloud usage. They have surveyed over 300 businesses with at least 1,000 employees each in order to create a glimpse into how the Cloud is used. The key finding from the report is the sheer increase in how much Cloud is actually been used.

Nexus, an IT company in Exeter that provides Cloud services, has recently surveyed over 300 large organizations with at least 1,000 employees. They were looking specifically at how the Cloud is currently being used and how much it has grown over the years. The findings were very interesting.

The first element of the study looked at how important the Cloud is to customers today. It was found that:

• 93% of businesses use infrastructure-as-a-service or are piloting it.
• 82% of businesses now have a strategy to use the Cloud. In 2014, this was just 74%.

It also came as no surprise that public cloud services are the most popular, even for enterprises. This is also true in terms of workloads. The study showed that:

• 88% of businesses now use public cloud and 63% use private cloud.
• 13% run at least 1,000 VMs in the public cloud. 22% run over 1,000 VMs in the private cloud.
• Businesses expect that the workloads for public clouds will increase soon.

It seems that there is still a lot of opportunity for organizations to adopt the Cloud as well. The study showed that:

• 68% of respondents have less than 20% of their portfolio on the Cloud.
• 55% say that their applications are not in the cloud, but could be.

It also seems that businesses’ central IT services, whether in-house or outsourced, are taking the lead in moving to the Cloud:

• 62% said decisions on how to use the Cloud were made by the IT department.
• 43% of teams have developed a portal to enable employees to access it, with another 41% planning to develop one.

Two specific features, being DevOps and Docker, were highlighted in particular in the Nexus report:

• DevOps adoption has reached an average of 66% and some are up to 71%/
• Puppet and Chef are very popular services, with 24% and 28% of organizations respectively using them.
• Docker, which is a relative new service, is already being used by 13% of businesses and 35% are planning on signing up.

By far the biggest public Cloud is Amazon Web Services (AWS), although Azure is the big up and comer. AWS is adopted by 57% and Azure by 12%. Azure held just 6% on year ago. Furthermore, Azure is narrowing the gap with a 19% adoption, compared to 50% for AWS. In fifth place, after AWS, Azure, Rackspace and Google, is vCloud Air, with just 7%.

Peter Walker, who lead on the survey for Nexus, stated that:

“It will come as no surprise that there is a far greater adoption of internet as a service than what there is for platform as a service, which everybody believed was going to be the next big thing. However, platform as a service (PaaS) is still popular as well, although not among Azure users. Most PaaS users are found with Google users. Internet as a service (IaaS), meanwhile, is being adopted by both Azure and Google and their growth over the past year has been much stronger. We foresee that PaaS will eventually be completely phased out.”

He added:

“We are now living in a time period where those make decisions for IT management have a lot more choices available to them. We believe that, soon, the majority of workloads will be running fully in the Cloud.”

When you’re running a small business, it’s all too easy to get caught up in managing your finances and keeping up with regulatory obligations, and lose track of what’s most important of all: productivity. If you’re not producing enough, you’re in trouble, and if your production is inefficient, you’re missing out on opportunities for growth. Both these things can be difficult to measure, but with the help of emerging technologies it’s getting easier than ever to ensure you’re in control.

Managing time

Getting a handle on time management is the starting point for maximising your productivity. You can start by walking around your workplace, observing what people are doing at different times of day. Most people are more efficient in the mornings, so shifting important tasks to that time can help in producing clear, focused outcomes. Decision-making tends to be poorer in the afternoon, so this can be a good time for working on simple, repetitive tasks or doing research. Installing software such as Rescue Time can help you keep track of what each individual is doing over the course of the day.

Analysing output

When it comes to measuring productivity, the challenge lies in keeping track of all the separate bits of work your company does. Some of this can be done by asking employees to self-report on task progress or completion in a database or spreadsheet system. As an alternative, and a much more practical option in larger or more diverse businesses, software like Project Partner can be used to identify and integrate outcomes so that you can more easily map overall performance.

Integrating tasks

Rather than spending all your time overseeing work so that you can ensure completed materials move on to the next stage of processing, consider investing in ERP software that can take care of this for you. This makes it much easier to plan employee schedules so that they fit easily around each other and nobody is left doing nothing while waiting for somebody else to complete a task.

Identifying problems

Noise in the workplace is a big problem for some workers, so it’s worth talking to your staff to see if a different office layout might be helpful for them. Simply fitting carpets or adding soft furnishings to the workplace can substantially reduce the amount of noise.

Absences and poor quality work stemming from drug and alcohol misuse can have a significant impact on productivity. Administering the occasional oral fluid lab test is easy to do, minimally intrusive and very effective in encouraging employees to avoid getting into trouble.

Whatever problems your staff may have, it’s always better if they’re confident enough of your support to let you know about them. Taking an interest in your employees as people means you’re much more likely to successfully identify difficulties before they have a serious impact on productivity.

With a combination of technological means and good management, you can ensure that your workplace is running efficiently and your productivity always achieves its potential.

For many people, breaking away from the humdrum world of the corporate office into a small start-up company is a dream of freedom. Moreover, the opportunity to work on a personal tech project and make it profitable is also professionally tempting. There are notable success stories of tech start-ups that have hit the big time and earned their founder’s big money. However, that is far from the whole story.

The tech start-up: make money quickly?

Although a tech start-up is popularly seen as a quick way to get rich, that is not often the case. Unless a new product or service is designed, packaged, marketed, and ready to go live, there is lots of work to do before any income starts rolling in. Even if you have few expenses or equipment or materials purchases, there will most likely be concept development time to cover. Furthermore, unless you are a sole proprietor, this will include other people and therefore potentially salaries. Costs add up quickly.

Complications of the tech start-up

A first hurdle for the tech entrepreneur is finding funding to cover the gap between opening a business on paper and commencing trade that generates income. You may have savings to cover this period, but otherwise, seeking finance is likely to be a large part of your work, taking time from the tech side of your new business. Moreover, the initial paperwork of establishing a business format, accounts, and premises cannot be overlooked.

Understanding business finance

Getting to grips with finance is the first order of business for a tech start-up. This background research is best done, if possible, before taking the plunge into entrepreneurship. If you understand the framework of business licences, taxation, employment contracts, and accounting before your first day as an entrepreneur, you are already ahead of the many who leap into start-ups without understanding the financial risks.

Getting the right accountant

An excellent starting point is identifying the right financial expertise for your support network. For example, Pocket Accounts stands out. A tech start-up needs support from people who understand how businesses work at a nuts and bolts level. Accounting and taxation, two of the biggest worries of business owners, are specialities at Pocket Accounts, and from day one a company like this can help you along the right financial path.

Simple tips for a business plan

Especially if you need financing, starting up involves a business plan. In writing this, you get to analyse your own situation. Being honest with yourself at this stage saves a lot of worry later on.

The basics can seem simple:

• Carefully identify costs, overheads, and taxes

• Evaluate likely income

• Quantify the gap between goals and reality

• Explore ways to bridge that gap

The trick, however, is in the detail. This is where you may need to find creative business solutions as well as inventive tech solutions.

In summary: start up, start right

Jumping in and kicking off a tech start-up can be exciting, and many entrepreneurs find success. Many more find themselves in difficulty because they did not examine the financial implications at the outset. By doing your homework and finding a knowledgeable financial partner before making the first steps, you can start out ahead of the game.

Many laptops have claimed to be the next “MacBook killer.” None succeeded. So why another contender? You’ve obviously not seen this new wonder from Microsoft.

 Last October 26, Microsoft unveiled a unique tablet with the technology to replace your basic laptop, the Surface Pro 4. Microsoft continuously innovates their product by making it faster, convenient, and with longer battery life than its previous models. Microsoft released Surface Pro 4 before its main competitor the new Apple IPad Pro with Apple’s desktop operating system, the OS X.

What’s in it to win it.

The Surface Pro 4 is equipped with 128 GB Intel HD Graphics 520, 4 GB Memory (RAM), and 2.4GHz Intel Core i5 6300U for $999 and running on Windows 10 Pro (64 bit) as its operating system. They maintained its design and almost the same as the Surface Pro 3, but this time they made Surface Pro 4’s displays bigger and thinner. It now weighs 771 grams or 1.7 pounds. It is great for frequent travel and work outside the field. You can learn more about the Microsoft Surface 4 at Harvey Norman.

According to cnet.com, the new Surface Pro 4 is Microsoft’s victory lap.

What’s good

As a totally new feature, the Surface Pro 4 comes with Windows Hello, Microsoft’s new technology for biometric authentication. The Surface Pro 4 fits a bigger screen with a higher resolution into a tad slimmer body than last year’s model. The pen and keyboard cover are also upgraded, and this is one of the first mobile systems shipping with Intel’s newest processors.

What’s bad

I don’t know why they keep doing this, but Microsoft still refuses to take account of the Type Cover keyboard by default, forcing a separate buy. Battery life is a bit better, but still isn’t enough to last you a day with continues usage.

The Bottom Line.

A host of small improvements cements the Surface Pro 4’s position as the best-in-class Windows tablet — so long as you’re prepared to pay extra wad for the required keyboard cover accessory. Now after three generations of pitching a tablet that can replace your laptop with mixed success, they finally made it right this time.

But is it a “MacBook killer?” I dare say NO. But it serves its purpose well.

The Surface Pro line is less about pitching the very concept of the tablet PC with a detachable keyboard to wary shoppers, and more about seeing how far it can go in refining the final product.

Should you buy it?

If you are a previous owner of Surface Pro 3, then you certainly know the advantages of owning a Surface device: it’s razor thin, portable, and very powerful. While you may be quite satisfied with your current laptop, the Surface Pro 4 will make you reconsider because of its very compelling features.

The Surface Pro 4 is a great device hands down. If you want a tablet that can replace your laptop, then there is no question about it; the Surface Pro 4 is the way to go. Try it, why don’t you?