Author: Blancer

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Pulse CMS. The developer describes Pulse as a simple CMS designed for small websites. It enables you to add content management to an existing site in five minutes. Define the “blocks” on your website you wish to be editable and Pulse provides an easy to use backend to make edits right from your browser. Pulse also includes a blog, gallery manager and contact form; everything you need to power a small website.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Pulse CMS

Pulse CMS

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:

1. WYSIWYG content Editor
2. Built in blog with RSS & comments
3. Create beautiful galleries
4. Add a contact form to your site in seconds
5. Easy to set up, takes 5 mins

Requirements: Apache and PHP5
Price: $19
Developer: Mark Fick

Seems like the 21st century is a bad time to be a brick and mortar retailer. Americans have long been accustomed to mail-order shopping, a tradition that started in the late 1800′s with settlers in the west. Considering how many commercials you see trying to get you to buy something right then over a toll-free number, someone must actually order random things over the phone, too.

Then came the internet. With promises of unlimited selection and the convenience of shopping in your pajamas, eCommerce was poised to take over traditional catalog orders. Promises of free shipping, then, started luring customers away from traditional stores, too. Today’s onslaught of downloadable eBooks, music, movies, and apps from iTunes, Amazon, and more changes it yet again, replacing both the stores and the very things they used to sell.

Where does traditional retail fit in today? Can it adapt to the changes, or remake itself into retail 2.0 by leveraging the internet along with their physical locations?

Retail Meets the Internet

In the late 1990′s, everyone and their dog suddenly had a website. Stores of all sizes, from car lots to small grocery stores, had banners up with their new .com address for everyone to see. While the early 2000′s made it look like the golden age of online retail had passed as soon as it started, many companies such as Amazon.com and Apple’s new iTunes music store kept innovating and bringing more and more commerce online. Today, many of us order online by default, and retail stores have had to innovate to keep up.

Most traditional stores have struggled to be competitive online, and usually take one of two approaches: use the website as a separate retail center, or use the site as a catalog to browse what they sell in-store. Some stores have taken their sites even further, though. Walmart hasn’t attempted to match Amazon’s free shipping directly, but they do offer unlimited free shipping to any Walmart store with Site-to-Store. This lets them add more selection online while still getting customers into their stores.

Walmart uses their stores and distribution infrastructure to ship to store for free

Keeping Location Important

Then, the past couple years have brought an explosion in smartphones and social networks. Location sharing networks, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, have encouraged stores to offer special prices to users that check-in with their apps. The trend has grown enough for heavyweights such as Facebook to jump in, with their own Facebook Places check-in system. Many stores have jumped on this trend that puts more emphasis on local businesses, though some have been overwhelmed with demand for the deals, leaving customers frustrated instead of excited over their local businesses.

You can't escape Facebook anywhere today – Photo via 30 Lines: http://j.mp/fEm2on

Then, coupons have suddenly become the most popular thing again, with Groupon and LivingSocial, among others, competing to be the most popular deals network. Some stores have gone along with the trend, though others have been frustrated by the lost revenue from the offers. These both show that traditional stores still need to tred carefully with the latest internet fads. While bringing the web into your store experience can get you new customers, you can also end up being essentially DDoSed in person by the huge influx of customers.

Pervasive Free WiFi

More and more stores and restaurants seem to have free WiFi nowadays, and many of us compulsively check for public WiFi wherever we are. Stores can use this to their advantage to improve customers’ experience in the stores. Barnes & Nobel has done a great job with this by offering free WiFi access to anyone with a Nook eBook reader. They additionally let Nook owners browse though the full contents of any Nook eBooks on their devices in the store, much like you can flip thorough a paper book in the store. It’s meshing the digital and real world, and seems like a great strategy for B&N. After all, anything you can do to get more people in should improve sells overall.

Barnes & Noble: Staying relevant in the age of eBooks – Photo via Travelin' Librarian: http://j.mp/edgv6f

Even without WiFi, shoppers are using internet in stores. I’ve cross-checked prices using EDGE connections, and some stores that match competitor prices have even matched Amazon prices I’ve found online in the store. Most customers would simply leave the store and order online otherwise, but matching the price makes them much more likely to buy something else in-store and come back later for other purchases. I’m always pleased to find stores that are willing to compete with websites, and it makes me much more likely to pop back in for something else I need later.

The Future

Going forward, I hope to see physical stores increasingly embrace the mobile internet to enhance their in-store experience. There are plenty of times that holding something before buying it can be nice, and Apple’s stores have shown that a high quality retail experience that attracts people away from their Amazon shopping cart can still be achieved today. They’ve done this by creating an attractive experience that’s more fun than buying a computer or iPod from their website.

Apple: the 21st century's best retail success – Photo via david.orban: http://j.mp/hSGqLk

First, stores should take design cues from the best online retailers. Sure, Amazon offers millions of books, but they also excel at curating the best of their products, making them appealing to the customers who are most likely to buy them. With limited shelf space, brick and mortar retailers need to see their job as a curator that presents a showcase of goods that offer value to their customers. A well organized and designed store can still be fun to visit, but no one likes searching through random items to find that obscure thing you’re looking for at a superstore.

Then, stores should take advantage of customers love of eCommerce and smartphones to make in-store shopping nicer. For example, stores could include a store directory on the local free WiFi network that was designed for mobile devices. Shoppers could then find their way around the store from their phone, or search for that hard-to-find item and discover it quicker than ever.

What are your thoughts on the future of eCommerce and local retail? How can retail reinvent itself in the 21st century? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below!

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Scadaplan. The developer describes Scadaplan as a well designed project management and collaboration tool for small and middle groups. It takes seconds to creating a task and start collaborating with your teammates. With Scadaplan calendar you’ll see the whole picture of your team, you can see future work and analyze past projects. Give it a try and see magic in action.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Scadaplan

Scadaplan

About the App

Here are the top three features you can expect to see in the latest version:

1. Create, track and manage tasks and projects.
2. Real-time notifications and team actions.
3. Super-calendar to plan and organize your or teammates work.

Requirements: Modern browsers and internet connection.
Price: Free
Developer: Scada

For most, music is a core essential in day to day living. We hear it while shopping, waiting in elevators, perusing the mall, while driving and just about anywhere there’s electronics. Thanks to developments in web technology, we’re able to enjoy more music that we prefer and even build online libraries — in some cases for free. There’s even been speculation that Apple is preparing to offer some sort of online version of iTunes while Amazon has already delivered their version, called Cloud Player.

With so many fantastic music streaming (both radio and full library) apps available, it’s hard to decide between them all. With your help, we’d like to put together a comparison between the most popular music streaming apps and all their different offerings. This overview should help many of you make a more definitive decision and ultimately a more satisfying one.

So which app(s) do you use? If yours isn’t in our poll list, let us know what it is. Why is it your preferred music streaming app?

Designing websites is an art. A lot of tools and techniques are used to create a design before the programmers can start working on it to create the backend. Even for the experienced designer, it might not be ideal for remembering the organization of the pages and content in his head throughout the process. Pen and paper can only go so long.

Jumpchart helps you plan websites before getting the design and coding done. Care to know how useful the app actually is?

Overview

Overview

Making a website design and organization plan is now so easy with Jumpchart. The app allows you to create pages and subpages enabling you to quickly sketch out the hierarchy of your site. Jumpchart lets you change titles whenever you please and reorganize with just a click and a drag. It’s never been easier to plan the navigation for your site.

Pricing

Pricing

Jumpchart has four different pricing plans starting from an economical $5 a month plan. Various factors determine the variation in price but key among them is the number of concurrent projects, collaborators, pages per project and storage. A free plan that allows only one project with 10 pages is available for everyone to evaluate the app.

Ease of Use

While signing up, you will be asked to create a sub domain for your company. Unlike a lot of other apps, immediately after signing up you will be redirected to and logged into your account page. This is how easy user experience should be. Usually, I find myself stranded somewhere in the homepage and will have to feed the login credentials to get in.

Using Jumpchart

Creating a Project

Project Page

The landing page will prompt you to create a project. There is a note letting you know of the example project link at the bottom of the page, to get a good understanding of what the app can do for you. I would strongly suggest that you check it out, as it will help you master the features of the app very quickly.

Editing Content

Each new project created comes with a basic template of a website. To start making it your own and add some content, use the Edit Content button. Enter the web copy for the page and if you plan to add more elements to the web page — radio buttons, bullets, form — use the respective option on the smart sidebar to the left.

The smart sidebar, as the name indicates, is smart and it lets you organize your navigation easily. With each type of layout you are creating, the options on the sidebar changes accordingly.

Adding Pages

Use the tabs at the top to create pages and sub pages. Give the page a name and start editing it by slecting it from the sidebar. The option to create multiple pages in go is very handy. Use asterisks to denote the depth of the pages you want to add, and type their titles one for each line. These pages will be added one after another to the bottom of the existing list of pages. Sub pages can be created the same way. A sub page is automatically created beneath the page you are currently viewing.

Adding a New Page

Starting from the homepage you can keep adding pages, and sub pages till you have the perfected the design you have in mind. To make the pages complete, you can start adding text, images, and attachments using the smart sidebar. Select the element you want on the page and hit save to see it live on the page. Good stuff!

To delete pages and sub pages, use the Remove Page option at the top. And to reorder the pages you create, use the Reorder Pages button on the smart sidebar.

Collaboration

Conversation and feedback play a vital role in building a website. Jumpchart lets you make page level comments to get/leave feedback and ideas. You can also attach files to the comment and instead of visiting the page to check if there is a follow up comment, you can subscribe to email notifications.

Adding a Comment

To invite people to work with you on the project, just click the People button in the top bar to give others access to your Jumpcharts. You can only share projects that you created and not the ones shared with you. Besides that, you can allow who can edit the project and who gets a read only access. From the Revisions tab, you can monitor who made what changes to the project precisely.

Views

Wireframe View

In addition to seeing the live preview of the page as and when you add content to it, you can also see the design created so far in Wireframe and Sitemap views. The wireframe is a mockup of just the text, files, and architecture of your site and does not include graphics or colors.

Sitemap View

Sitemaps are important for SEO and you also need them to keep track of the flow of pages in your website. The minute to add, edit or delete a page or rearrange it, it’s automatically reflected in your sitemap. There is no need for you to manually edit them.

Final Thoughts

From top to bottom, Jumpchart is a terrific app jam packed with features. The focus is on helping users without any prior experience to give their dream website a shape. While the user interface is intuitive and elegant, it looks a bit off. Not everywhere, but some screens have a stretched out look with the design elements being unnecessarily bigger.

Share Your Thoughts!

Do you use apps to get the basic website planning or stick to pen and paper? How much time an app like Jumpchart can save?

Social Media is like a bull in the China shop. It’s powerful and is uncontrollably wild. People who complain about email overload should take peek at the plight of a social media consultant and consider themselves blessed. Every hour on the hour, the flow of information exponentially increases and processing it requires top notch apps.

Todaypulse offers an easy way to manage your social media marketing and create conversations with your customers.

Overview

Overview

Todaypulse helps you save a lot of time with a single log in for all of your accounts. With this web app it’s now so easy to engage in the conversation that you’ve been missing and make social marketing a regular part of your day. Signing up for the service didn’t take long and there is no need for submitting credit card information.

Pricing

From a single login account to team accounts and white labelled services, Todaypulse has plans for companies of all sizes. The plans start at $24 a month. All premium accounts come with a 14 day free trial period.

Pricing

Apart from the SaaS pricing plans, Todaypulse offers social media consulting and analytics services too. For a fee, you can gain access to a monthly one-on-one social media assessment with a Todaypulse social media expert.

Dashboard

Dashboard

Without the need for email activation, the app will take you straight to the Dashboard aka. Inbox. Since I just opened a brand new account, there is nothing to comment here yet, so let us proceed to adding a couple of social media accounts from the prominently displayed Get Started Now button.

Ease of Use

At present you can integrate your accounts from the following three networks – Twitter, Facebook and WordPress. Given the fact that beyond these three services ther isn’t much of the social happening, absence of Tumblr and YouTube could be ignored.

As usual, I opted to integrate my Twitter account at first. The integration happens via OAuth without the need for submitting your login credentials with Todaypulse. Integrating the Facebook account was hassle free as well. As soon as you allow the app access to your account, you are good to go.

Multiple Facebook Profiles

If you happen to have multiple Facebook accounts, the app will prompt you to choose the right one. You can also add multiple accounts from the other social networks too.

Accessing the Inbox

The Todaypulse inbox is a thing of beauty. It is designed like an email inbox and to be precise, more like a desktop based email client. If you have been accustomed to constant vertical flow of updates in a regular social media client, this experience would be very refreshing.

Inbox

From here, you can reply or comment to all of your social networks, approve WordPress comments, and publish blog posts without ever leaving the application. It’s just not built like an email inbox, but messages are displayed like emails too. When you select a message, you will see the sender (just like an email header) and all his profile information. Then there is the message in the body followed by a space for you to send a reply just like the way you reply an email.

Publishing Updates

From the Publish screen, you can push updates to an unlimited number of Twitter and Facebook accounts from one powerful interface. There is a separate editor for each social network. For example, the Tweet window is pretty standard looking, while the WordPress account has a WYSIWYG editor. The editors leverage the strengths from each network, so that you always get the maximum results. If you have multiple accounts of the same social network, use the drop down button to select the right one and the publish away.

Publishing a Tweet

The web app keeps a record of all published messages and if your are managing a team that is engaging with your audience, you will know exactly where each member left off and others can take it from there.

Engaging Your Audience

The Engage section of the app is all about your social media mentions. From here you can stay on top of what people are saying about your brand and how flattering they actually are. The engage section works the same way as the Inbox and Publish sections  and you can reply or initiate a conversation without leaving this page.

Adding Tabs

Another interesting aspect of the Engage section is the presence of tabs. You can create a tab and tuck away conversations or searches by topic. While there is no way you can access multiple tabs simultaneously, you can switch between them with ease.

Creating a Search

Tabs can be of great help to stay on top of news and keywords. From a tab you can do three things. First, use it to search for track keywords. Second you can search for questions from Twitter, Yahoo Answers and Answers from Business.com. Finally, you can subscribe to RSS feeds of your chocie and keep yourself updated with news from non real time sources.

Final Thoughts

Managing social media could be very distracting. But with Todaypulse, you get everything you need to get your social mojo going. The app is designed to perfection and is easy for anyone to start using it in a matter of minutes. The plans are a bit on the pricier side though. While it might not be right to compare with services like Hootsuite, Todaypulse could consider coming up with an economy plan for casual users.

Share Your Thoughts!

What is your take on aggregating social media accounts? Will you give Todaypulse a try?