Apple no longer calls their Maps the most beautiful and powerful ever

Hot on the heels of the new alternative Maps apps section in the AppStore, Apple has also toned down their elated iOS6 Maps app copy as keen visitors to their website have spotted.

As it’s conveniently clear from the screenshot, the previous copy called the new Maps app “the most beautiful, powerful mapping service ever”. The new wording turns the attention to another key feature – “the beautiful vector-based interface that scales and zooms with ease” and certainly takes a more modest stance.

I wonder when are they going to change the messed up icon as well.

It clearly shows a navigation route making a sharp left off a bridge.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Honest Feedback is what You want? Try These Ideas

It is nice to check the statistics available at Google Analytics to infer the intention of the visitors and to form an idea of what the visitors want from your business. Google Analytics is good but not great, when it comes to gathering real inputs from real audience. It is good for guesswork but who care about guess work when you can get direct feedback from real audience of flesh and blood. Getting feedback directly from the audience has its own share of benefits. Apart from leaving out the guesswork, you will get exact reason why some people are not converting. You may find out the reason why people are not that interested in creating an account with your website or what causing them buying your products less frequently. These are some of those questions that can make or break the fate of your business. Therefore, you need to have definite answers to them. No guess work please. So, here we are going to show you some ways to get direct feedback from your visitors without making them feel irritated of course:

Surveys: Surveys inarguably are the lifeblood of gathering feedbacks. The best thing about surveys is that you can set them easily and the result is tangible i.e. you can easily analyze them. But there are some cardinal rules of setting up surveys that you should not ignore.

It has to be short. People are busy these days and that being said, you simply cannot expect that your loyal visitors will take the pain to fill out a form because that would cost them 10 valuable minutes of their lives. Nope, they might not be that interested in making that huge sacrifice. Try to keep the number of questions to logical limit. Do not ask more than 5 questions and never ever try to add more than 10 questions under any circumstances. Make it short and sweet unless you do not mind seeing higher rejection rate.

Questions should have a purpose. Since people will be voluntarily wasting their time to give feedback about your products, you should not include questions that do not serve any purpose. Even one single useless question can hurt the entire process. Include only those questions that are essential to help you improve customer retention or providing better users’ experience.

Add open Minded Question. If you are only giving your visitors options to choose from, you cannot always expect the right answer. Therefore, you should keep a provision for users to add feedback about your products and services. It will help you get honest feedbacks.

Feedback Boxes: Experts say that customers know your business better than you do. This is the reason why it is important to have direct feedback from them. Since they are browsing your website 24X7, they might face some issues that your testing department might have missed out on. Or else they might have found something broken in your website. Now as the problem is yours, in the majority of cases, visitors will not call your tech support team to describe the problems they are facing rather they will just leave your website feeling irritated and frustrated. This is where feedback forms can do wonders.

The purpose of using feedback form is that it simplifies the way visitors can inform the webmasters when they find that something is not working or when they find a nice idea that, you can give a try. Now do not cram the feedback form with bells and whistles because it will scare the hell out of the visitors. Just name, contact details and a field to add the feedback will do. And do not forget to do experiments with the position of the feedback boxes; you may never know when you strike pure gold.

Tracking Individual User Activities: With Google Analytics, you will be able to track things like – which sections of your website are most visited or where visitors are spending most of their time. But this will all give you an idea of the performance of the website as a whole. To be able to have customized reports on individuals, you need to give a try at customer analytics.

When you are measuring the outcome of a free trial offer, you need to check all the details of all the individuals who have subscribed for the product. You need to have details of things like – how many people actually use the trail version and for how many days, what was the average time spent on the trail version of the products, were they using the trail version regularly etc. Check all the details very carefully and you will be able to come to a conclusion.

For say, if you find that people were actually using the trail version regularly but they are still not upgrading to pro version, there should be something wrong with the pricing. Alternatively, if you find that people are not returning to your website after being subscribed to trail version, the product is not that great. These are few things that you can gather intelligence from.

Usability Testing: Would it not be nice if your website were judged by a stranger? Definitely, it will. Since he does not who you are or what your website is all about, he can give you feedback, which is not influenced by previous experience or something like that. Previously, it would have cost you an arm and leg to get your website tested by an agency, but now things have changed. You can pay a nominal amount in any of the available users testing websites and you will get real feedback from real visitors about anything you like.

Author Bio
Michael Evans is passionate about search industry and web design. He is currently associated with MotoCMS where you can find wide range of Flash templates to choose from.  You can contact him at – michaelevansnet@gmail.com. 

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Source : techtalkafrica[dot]com

Check out 3D Ms. Pac-Man at New York’s Museum of Art and Design

At Babycastles Summit, visitors experienced a new realm of video games including a 3D Ms. Pac-Man set that covered every wall of the room.

Lots of museums in New York City offer interactive exhibitions where visitors can play with the installations and experience the sensory first-hand. But none were quite as geeky and awesome as this 3D Ms. Pac-Man game that takes up the space of an entire room — ceilings included. If you happened to be in the Big Apple this past month, a visit to the Museum of Art and Design in midtown afforded you the opportunity to take the widely-loved 8-bit game to a new dimension.

Created Keita Takahashi, the mastermind behind the wacky game Katamari Damacy, the playable 3D Ms. Pac-Man requires player to physically move their bodies as they play. As Ms. Pac-Man runs off one wall and onto the other, you’ll need to make the correct turns and keep your eyes on the other walls to ensure you don’t accidentally run into a ghost. Remember to watch out for the special fruits as well if you want to make the high score!

The installation is part of Babycastles Summit, a collaboration between the social video gaming group and Takahashi, to bring the arcade world to life size. Other exhibitions include a two-player controlled Super Mario Bros. that looks more like ball drop game for weight trainers, and Defender-style game that requires players to run from room to room to catch the movement of their characters on separate but connected computer screens. The latter takes side-scroller games to a literal level, and makes the game feel more interactive. Who wouldn’t want to jump into a ball pit after completing a level? Unfortunately, this option isn’t very doable in New York City-sized apartments for us gamers in the metropolis… which is why a day at the museum makes perfect sense.

If you’re visiting New York and want to learn more about video game history and some interactivity, don’t feel bad that you missed this summit. A short trip to the Museum of Moving Image in Queens also allows you to explore some background behind gaming technologies and play with vintage arcade booths. This is the same museum that, back in 2007, had an exhibition for a projector screen-sized Star Wars shooter game so you can certainly expect tons of nerdy fun no matter how many times you visit.

Check out the videos from Babycastles Summit, a giant adult playground, thanks to Kotaku.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Samsung opens Apple-style store in Sydney, short walk from Apple store

Samsung has just opened its very first Experience retail store in Australia, though visitors may find the new shop reminds them of another one located just around the corner.

When Samsung looked around for ideas on how to design its Experience retail store, it’s not hard to work out from where it drew much of its inspiration. It’s the minimalist design, the tables showing off the latest gadgets and devices, the blue-shirted employees, the overall look and feel – and to think that in San Jose right now a nine-person jury is discussing whether Samsung is a “copyist”.

After opening its first North American Experience retail store in Vancouver last month, the Korean company has now moved into a new site in Sydney, Australia, just a short walk from – you guessed it – an Apple store.

Bedecked with smartphones and tablets – including its new Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet – as well as a wide range of accompanying accessories, the new store has a light and airy look, judging by pictures posted by the Sydney Morning Herald’s technology editor, Asher Moses.

Moses reports Samsung as claiming the store was “all its own idea,” though of course the similarities between Samsung’s new store and Apple’s equivalent aren’t lost on Moses. “Everything from the store layout to the sales staff to the products and even the packaging and promotional material is uncannily Apple-esque,” he notes.

When asked about the look of the new store and its similarity to Apple’s design, Tyler McGee, vice-president of telecommunications for Samsung Australia, conveniently failed to address the issue. “Well, if you look at our layout this is the layout that we use around the world and it’s about basically giving the consumers the opportunity to interact, learn and play with our devices,” he said.

There is one part of the Apple story that it’s safe to say the Korean tech company is out to copy, and that’s the huge success of its retail business. Last year alone, the Cupertino company’s 377 stores around the world racked up sales totaling an impressive $16 billion.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com