Need more sales? Virtually every single Organization, no matter of its size, does.
Historically online sales leads generation had been done via different techniques such as e-mail blasts, newsletters, pay per click and banner advertising, SEO etc. Depending on the market, industry, geography and depending on how targeted your message is these techniques are more or less expensive and more or less effective.
Since the proliferation of mobile devices a whole new avenue of advertising was born. And it's a different ball game.
Mobile devices present a few different feature sets and a truck load of new opportunities. Essentially mobile search is:
- location oriented
- immediate action / trigger oriented
- growing
Let's take the opportunity and discuss these three features of mobile search.
Location oriented means that your customer can be presented your advertising message right where he or she is. This is a tremendous opportunity for local businesses or other organizations that conduct business locally (rather than nation wide, State wide or regional).
There are many verticals that can take advantage of such a powerful feature: some examples are restaurants, doctors, service companies, auto shops, beauty salons, shopping malls, hospitality providers, home improvements specialists etc.
Immediate action oriented means that your potential customer, while using his/her mobile device and while being presented with a strong call to action, will be very likely to take immediate action by either calling your company's phone or at least sending you an e-mail. The reason is that most of the people use their mobile devices to satisfy an immediate on the go need for a service or product.
That is great news for professionals like attorneys, doctors, service providers, marketing and leads generation companies, restaurants, hospitality etc.
The fact that mobile search is by far one of the biggest growing markets right now is no news. In the US more than 50% of the searches are currently done from mobile devices and the market keeps growing. It is very likely that over the next 3-5 years mobile search will strongly dominate the whole search market.
Our company is asked to present proposals on designing mobile leads generation systems including systems that target the customer where it is, when he/she is using his/her smart phone. And systems that store leads data such as name, phone #, e-mail address, location, search terms, preferences etc.
The systems that we currently have in place are hard hitting and highly profitable and customers always come back to us for more sophisticated features or to expand the service in other verticals. Some companies ask for comprehensive platforms / frameworks targeting multiple verticals, geographies and classes of services.
Whoever you are and wherever you are we are strongly recommending you to jump the wagon of mobile sales and marketing leads generation.
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
Witty Web Solutions (http://wittywebnow.com) is a Miami Beach based software development company. Our code is lean, small foot print, easy to read, reliable and fast. We have excellent tech support. We save development costs by implementing agile project management techniques.
Friday, September 26, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
On new search technologies
Organizing information, search and retrieval were always important aspects of computer science. Older management information systems used to store and index data in databases and used to provide the programmer with fairly robust and reliable ways to select & display the desired data based on certain criteria.
Depending on the technology, the size of the data and the nature of the data certain solutions delivered more performance (speed) and accuracy than others.
Since the raise (and fall) of different search engines- you can read raise for Google and fall for companies like WebCrawler, AOL and Altavista- the topic of searching in unstructured data became more prominent.
There is an enormous amount of data on the web, most of it unstructured and a lot of it noisy. The issue of relevance in search and retrieve, especially on free text searches, is more and more current.
While companies like Google do a very good job, there are many other smaller players who implement similar technologies to fuel their search.
Let's take the case study of a business that matches service providers with their clients in a certain industry. They maintain a fairly large database, a free text search field on their homepage and want people to be able to search & retrieve the most relevant companies to the search criteria based on what the user types in that free text search field.
The company chose Python with the django framework to implement their search. A module called Hystack allows for plugging in powerful search services like Solr or Elasticsearch. These solutions implement high performance, index based, natural search on free text fields.
With Elasticsearch for example you can boost the weight of a field, i.e. for example giving a priority to a match by title in comparison to a match by description.
Here are two very interesting tutorials.
Building a full-text search engine with django:
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittymobileapps.weebly.com
Depending on the technology, the size of the data and the nature of the data certain solutions delivered more performance (speed) and accuracy than others.
Since the raise (and fall) of different search engines- you can read raise for Google and fall for companies like WebCrawler, AOL and Altavista- the topic of searching in unstructured data became more prominent.
There is an enormous amount of data on the web, most of it unstructured and a lot of it noisy. The issue of relevance in search and retrieve, especially on free text searches, is more and more current.
While companies like Google do a very good job, there are many other smaller players who implement similar technologies to fuel their search.
Let's take the case study of a business that matches service providers with their clients in a certain industry. They maintain a fairly large database, a free text search field on their homepage and want people to be able to search & retrieve the most relevant companies to the search criteria based on what the user types in that free text search field.
The company chose Python with the django framework to implement their search. A module called Hystack allows for plugging in powerful search services like Solr or Elasticsearch. These solutions implement high performance, index based, natural search on free text fields.
With Elasticsearch for example you can boost the weight of a field, i.e. for example giving a priority to a match by title in comparison to a match by description.
Here are two very interesting tutorials.
Building a full-text search engine with django:
Haystack:
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittymobileapps.weebly.com
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Playing with the parking meter
The other day I had a meeting in Downtown Miami. As usually I had to drive around for about 10 min. to find parking. I eventually found a public parking lot where they had parking. There was a 7 hours minimum restriction at $7 (that was kind of cheesy but hey, it's the Downtown).
I gloriously pulled out my card to pay. Swipe it Adrian! ... But my first two attempts were not successful. The card reader does not react at all. Is the magnetic band of card scratched? I did not think so ... I had actually just used the card at Walgreens and it worked fine (I mean one time even at Walgreens the clerk had to wrap my card in a plastic bag to make it work!) ...
All right, my third attempt is successful, I am adding time, I am paying and I am pushing nice metallic buttons attached to what it looks like a fairly modern digital display.
It is now about 15 min. later. I made it to Downtown at 9:30 AM and it's now 9:45 AM. I am actually only a block away from the building where I have my meeting. I am relaxed. My meeting does not start until 10:00 AM.
Next thing that happens the pretty display comes up with this message. "Payment successful. There is no need to print a receipt. However if you wish to do so, press OK." Neat, I am thinking. So they have my plate # in their database (cause I had just inserted it) and the transaction confirmation. I should be good to go. I am sure the guy who patrols the parking plots is sophisticated enough to make the right determination. He won't give me a ticket.
But, somehow, I am still at unease. What if he is not? What if he/she will screw up like it happens many times and then I have to waste half a day to dispute a $18 ticket (cause you know I will; I don't like to pay for parking twice). Well, let's print out this ticket anyways.
I pushed OK. In about 20 other seconds, the receipt got printed out. I am picking up the receipt, going back to my car and proudly displaying my receipt in my windshield.
It is now 10 to 10 and I am happily leaving the parking lot. At 5 to 10 I am checked in by their receptionist. I made it on time for my meeting.
But I kind of burned a good 20-25 minutes looking for parking spots, parking, paying and printing receipts. Good thing I left half hour earlier than I should have left.
Now you guys tell me. Is this an efficient way of parking and making parking payments? Do all these help you out with your daily stress? (it's like we did not have enough of that)
The following scenario immediately comes up in my mind.
Let's cut our losses short. Let's do something like this.
I drive to Downtown and I make it there. As soon as I get into the closest "parking zone" to the building where I am going, my smartphone starts searching for available parking spots. In less than 10 seconds, it locates the closest available spot. It hooks those coordinates up to my GPS-es driving directions and it shows me where to go. I make it there in less than a minute. I pull in. I park. I get out of the car and head to the parking meter. I pull up my meter paying app, I push *one* button and I pay for parking. The meter's display gets automatically updates with my car's plate info because I am already in their database. I am out of there confident in one minute and thirty seconds.
Is this SciFi? Not at all. Our company can actually develop a technology like this. It would save people tremendous amount of time and headaches. And it will eliminate human errors while enforcing parking.
Is there infrastructure that needs to be build for this? Yes, it is. Are there software development services that need to be employed for this? I bet it is. But the most important thing for something like this is to have the desire to do it.
Hello ladies and gentleman at the City of Miami? Did you hear that?
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
I gloriously pulled out my card to pay. Swipe it Adrian! ... But my first two attempts were not successful. The card reader does not react at all. Is the magnetic band of card scratched? I did not think so ... I had actually just used the card at Walgreens and it worked fine (I mean one time even at Walgreens the clerk had to wrap my card in a plastic bag to make it work!) ...
All right, my third attempt is successful, I am adding time, I am paying and I am pushing nice metallic buttons attached to what it looks like a fairly modern digital display.
It is now about 15 min. later. I made it to Downtown at 9:30 AM and it's now 9:45 AM. I am actually only a block away from the building where I have my meeting. I am relaxed. My meeting does not start until 10:00 AM.
Next thing that happens the pretty display comes up with this message. "Payment successful. There is no need to print a receipt. However if you wish to do so, press OK." Neat, I am thinking. So they have my plate # in their database (cause I had just inserted it) and the transaction confirmation. I should be good to go. I am sure the guy who patrols the parking plots is sophisticated enough to make the right determination. He won't give me a ticket.
But, somehow, I am still at unease. What if he is not? What if he/she will screw up like it happens many times and then I have to waste half a day to dispute a $18 ticket (cause you know I will; I don't like to pay for parking twice). Well, let's print out this ticket anyways.
I pushed OK. In about 20 other seconds, the receipt got printed out. I am picking up the receipt, going back to my car and proudly displaying my receipt in my windshield.
It is now 10 to 10 and I am happily leaving the parking lot. At 5 to 10 I am checked in by their receptionist. I made it on time for my meeting.
But I kind of burned a good 20-25 minutes looking for parking spots, parking, paying and printing receipts. Good thing I left half hour earlier than I should have left.
Now you guys tell me. Is this an efficient way of parking and making parking payments? Do all these help you out with your daily stress? (it's like we did not have enough of that)
The following scenario immediately comes up in my mind.
Let's cut our losses short. Let's do something like this.
I drive to Downtown and I make it there. As soon as I get into the closest "parking zone" to the building where I am going, my smartphone starts searching for available parking spots. In less than 10 seconds, it locates the closest available spot. It hooks those coordinates up to my GPS-es driving directions and it shows me where to go. I make it there in less than a minute. I pull in. I park. I get out of the car and head to the parking meter. I pull up my meter paying app, I push *one* button and I pay for parking. The meter's display gets automatically updates with my car's plate info because I am already in their database. I am out of there confident in one minute and thirty seconds.
Is this SciFi? Not at all. Our company can actually develop a technology like this. It would save people tremendous amount of time and headaches. And it will eliminate human errors while enforcing parking.
Is there infrastructure that needs to be build for this? Yes, it is. Are there software development services that need to be employed for this? I bet it is. But the most important thing for something like this is to have the desire to do it.
Hello ladies and gentleman at the City of Miami? Did you hear that?
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Continuous integration with Cruise Control
Utilized for continuous/custom defined integration and delivery of source code and present in many agile environments, Cruise Control is an excellent tool your team can use to increase productivity.
We have personally configured and managed Cruise Control in Unix based environments to perform automatic nightly builds, per check-in builds, per change set / feature set builds and even hourly builds. However Cruise Control has a .NET version as well suitable for Windows environments.
We have used Cruise Control for data driven, we based projects of all sorts but most of them were related to management software for security devices, e-commerce, front ends of intense transaction databases etc. Actually you can use Cruise Control to automate the builds of virtually any kind of project you may have.
The concept is simple: you basically provision a build server, install the Cruise Control package and you configure it in conjunction with your Source Control System to pull sources and build them based on customized triggers and conditions you as a developer define.
Once the code is built, there are built-in mechanisms for automatic deployment of artifacts as well (i.e. such as straight forward mechanisms to deploy on dev, qa and uat targets).
For this article I will use the original documentation on cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net
Architectural overview
Here is a link to an architectural overview of Cruise Control:
http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/overview.html
The build loop
The build loop is the core of the automatic build process. It runs in background as a Unix daemon and it periodically checks the sources repository for changes in the code line. The time frames / events that trigger the new builds are highly configurable using the config.xml file.
Here are more details about the build loop of Cruise Control:
http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/main/index.html
Config.xml
In config.xml you define things like what is your source control system (svn, cvs, perforce etc.), what do you use to build your code (i.e. ant), where do you pull sources for different projects, when do you pull sources for different projects (i.e. nightly, every hour, per check-in etc.), where do you publish the artifacts, where do you keep your logs, what plug-ins you are using etc.
Here are more details about your config.xml file:
http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/main/configxml.html
Build results console
Build results JSP provides the results (or the output) of the build loop providing status on the built projects including current and previous projects.
Here are more details on the build results console:
http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/reporting/jsp/index.html
Dashboard
The Dashboard is an important web based tool that allows for visual representations of different projects statuses. There are square icons with different color codes to get instant visual status of your projects: i.e. build successful, build failed, build queued, build paused etc.
Here are more details about your Cruise Control Dashboard, it's an awesome tool:
http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/dashboard.html
In conclusion Cruise Control is an easy to use and configure builds automation and delivery tool that works in conjunction with all the major source control systems, build tools, reporting tools and defect tracking systems and that presents a variety of options to control and trigger the build.
I personally learned Cruise Control in less than a week and I used it successfully for years.
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
We have personally configured and managed Cruise Control in Unix based environments to perform automatic nightly builds, per check-in builds, per change set / feature set builds and even hourly builds. However Cruise Control has a .NET version as well suitable for Windows environments.
We have used Cruise Control for data driven, we based projects of all sorts but most of them were related to management software for security devices, e-commerce, front ends of intense transaction databases etc. Actually you can use Cruise Control to automate the builds of virtually any kind of project you may have.
The concept is simple: you basically provision a build server, install the Cruise Control package and you configure it in conjunction with your Source Control System to pull sources and build them based on customized triggers and conditions you as a developer define.
Once the code is built, there are built-in mechanisms for automatic deployment of artifacts as well (i.e. such as straight forward mechanisms to deploy on dev, qa and uat targets).
For this article I will use the original documentation on cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net
Architectural overview
Here is a link to an architectural overview of Cruise Control:
http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/overview.html
The build loop
The build loop is the core of the automatic build process. It runs in background as a Unix daemon and it periodically checks the sources repository for changes in the code line. The time frames / events that trigger the new builds are highly configurable using the config.xml file.
Here are more details about the build loop of Cruise Control:
http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/main/index.html
Config.xml
In config.xml you define things like what is your source control system (svn, cvs, perforce etc.), what do you use to build your code (i.e. ant), where do you pull sources for different projects, when do you pull sources for different projects (i.e. nightly, every hour, per check-in etc.), where do you publish the artifacts, where do you keep your logs, what plug-ins you are using etc.
Here are more details about your config.xml file:
http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/main/configxml.html
Build results console
Build results JSP provides the results (or the output) of the build loop providing status on the built projects including current and previous projects.
Here are more details on the build results console:
http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/reporting/jsp/index.html
Dashboard
The Dashboard is an important web based tool that allows for visual representations of different projects statuses. There are square icons with different color codes to get instant visual status of your projects: i.e. build successful, build failed, build queued, build paused etc.
Here are more details about your Cruise Control Dashboard, it's an awesome tool:
http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/dashboard.html
In conclusion Cruise Control is an easy to use and configure builds automation and delivery tool that works in conjunction with all the major source control systems, build tools, reporting tools and defect tracking systems and that presents a variety of options to control and trigger the build.
I personally learned Cruise Control in less than a week and I used it successfully for years.
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
Thursday, September 4, 2014
5 recent business requests we had in web and mobile design here in Miami
Fall is here in no time and we just left behind a fast hot summer. The Labor Day week-end at Rapids Water Park in West Palm Beach was fun!
But, of course, this week is back to work.
We have just started to work on a new hair salons management solution where we got the usual requirements with find, get to the store, make an appointment, manage the appoints calendar, provide a payment solution, provide reports, users and staff management etc. Normal requirements such as responsive design, mobile ready, secure, easy to use were on the table.
The graphic design / front end of this solution is very pretty and very clean so keep an eye open on this one as we lately had quite a few requests for mobile business calendars management.
But other than that you may ask us "what's shaking"? Here are a few things where we see action:
1. iOS development with full stack
There is a severe shortage of iOS programming resources in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale areas. And especially a shortage of developers with 5+ years of experience and experience in databases and web services as well. In other words it is hard to find full stack programmers with iOS.
Recruiters are scrambling around. Competent developers are jacking up the rates. And companies ready to hire push for good deals.
As a shop with competent expensive iOS developers it feels really good to be in such a sellers market.
2. Angular.js and Mongo DB
Since Google released angular.js (which takes care of a lot of your heavy lifting in front end development) there are many companies jumping the wagon and looking for good people. The more complex your front end is, the more need for angular.js you have. And there are not many people around who can program in that either.
Same thing with this very interesting object document oriented database technology called Mongo DB. Designed to allow for large, horizontally scaled databases and for increased performance and agility and adopted by some large organizations such as E-Bay, Forbes, Craigslist and Microsoft, Mongo is definitely growing and makes a lot of buzz in the community.
3. Content that involves users and drives business
There are a lot of online marketing companies out there. And there are a lot of strategies to drive traffic. But what a lot of customers complain is that their old sites conversion rates are not good. Other companies actually require some kind of content/marketing strategy as part of the presented technical solution when we send our bids.
Hence the need to produce great content that involves people who are landing on your website and actually makes them interact with your site / pick up the phone and call / start a chatting session with questions etc.
We are getting quite a bit of traction in that area as well by partnering with a three very competent video production, graphic design and SEO/PPC companies in town.
4. Agile development with continuous integration of new features
Agility is not just an edge anymore. When you are in the software development business it became a lifestyle.
Something different that we see lately is a lot of interest in emerging back end technologies that naturally allow for pivoting and agility. One of them is Mongo DB. Just been to a seminar and there was a lot of great stuff presented there. The community of developers and users was very engaged and you can tell why.
5. Mobile financial applications
We are constantly asked to send proposals for business applications for marketing and real estate companies. And they all involve implementing payment solutions.
But lately we had some interesting requests from pure financial companies, i.e. companies that are involved in the financial services industry. Secure, easy to do, flexible, comprehensive, mobile payments solutions are growing as banks and investment groups are starting to discover and appreciate the mobile technologies.
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
But, of course, this week is back to work.
We have just started to work on a new hair salons management solution where we got the usual requirements with find, get to the store, make an appointment, manage the appoints calendar, provide a payment solution, provide reports, users and staff management etc. Normal requirements such as responsive design, mobile ready, secure, easy to use were on the table.
The graphic design / front end of this solution is very pretty and very clean so keep an eye open on this one as we lately had quite a few requests for mobile business calendars management.
But other than that you may ask us "what's shaking"? Here are a few things where we see action:
1. iOS development with full stack
There is a severe shortage of iOS programming resources in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale areas. And especially a shortage of developers with 5+ years of experience and experience in databases and web services as well. In other words it is hard to find full stack programmers with iOS.
Recruiters are scrambling around. Competent developers are jacking up the rates. And companies ready to hire push for good deals.
As a shop with competent expensive iOS developers it feels really good to be in such a sellers market.
2. Angular.js and Mongo DB
Since Google released angular.js (which takes care of a lot of your heavy lifting in front end development) there are many companies jumping the wagon and looking for good people. The more complex your front end is, the more need for angular.js you have. And there are not many people around who can program in that either.
Same thing with this very interesting object document oriented database technology called Mongo DB. Designed to allow for large, horizontally scaled databases and for increased performance and agility and adopted by some large organizations such as E-Bay, Forbes, Craigslist and Microsoft, Mongo is definitely growing and makes a lot of buzz in the community.
3. Content that involves users and drives business
There are a lot of online marketing companies out there. And there are a lot of strategies to drive traffic. But what a lot of customers complain is that their old sites conversion rates are not good. Other companies actually require some kind of content/marketing strategy as part of the presented technical solution when we send our bids.
Hence the need to produce great content that involves people who are landing on your website and actually makes them interact with your site / pick up the phone and call / start a chatting session with questions etc.
We are getting quite a bit of traction in that area as well by partnering with a three very competent video production, graphic design and SEO/PPC companies in town.
4. Agile development with continuous integration of new features
Agility is not just an edge anymore. When you are in the software development business it became a lifestyle.
Something different that we see lately is a lot of interest in emerging back end technologies that naturally allow for pivoting and agility. One of them is Mongo DB. Just been to a seminar and there was a lot of great stuff presented there. The community of developers and users was very engaged and you can tell why.
5. Mobile financial applications
We are constantly asked to send proposals for business applications for marketing and real estate companies. And they all involve implementing payment solutions.
But lately we had some interesting requests from pure financial companies, i.e. companies that are involved in the financial services industry. Secure, easy to do, flexible, comprehensive, mobile payments solutions are growing as banks and investment groups are starting to discover and appreciate the mobile technologies.
Make it a great day!
Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com
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