Have you ever waiting for an important person to respond your email and wondering whether your email is being opened or not? Or as a company, would you like to know whether your customers actually open your newsletter and how long they spend on it? Even though nowadays Facebook, iMessage, WhatsApp, etc. all notify the sender when messages have been seen, the information like that is not provided by a regular email server and we always have to guess and wait.

Not too long ago, a Toronto Startup named MailTracker has created an app to tackle these issues and it is compatible with all regular email apps in iOS mobile operating system. MailTracker is actually using very simple technology; like other mail analytics providers, Mailtracker also uses tracking pixel technology – a small, transparent image that’s downloaded when an email is viewed and allows the sender to track that particular image from their own server. After installed the MailTracker, users can see whether their emails have been opened, how many times they’ve been opened, what kind of computer they’ve been viewed on, where that computer may be located, and more importantly, how long readers reading the email. These are very useful information, especially for enterprise to have a better understanding of their customers. Since this is so powerful, after this app becoming prevalent, I think people might start concerning about privacy and security issues.

MailTracker will extend to Android and the desktop soon. The app is free for the first two accounts and it has a pro version which can support 5 email accounts for $5 a month. Would you be interested in this app and test with your email today? I just did.

Source:

http://mailtrackerapp.com/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-digital/innovation/toronto-startup-drags-ordinary-e-mail-into-the-modern-era/article18298821/

In the past, we hear a lot about customer relationship management in order to better understand customers’ needs and target them effectively. Actually there are many sales tools to improve sales productivity which determines a company’s success.

Sales managers have integrated social, mobile, big data and cloud services to change the way they work, and sales representatives have to learn how the new system is operating and to quickly adapt to it. 60% of a buyer’s decision process is made online by using self-selection. This trend indicates that sales person’s role is not just providing product information any more. Gschwandtner, CEO of Selling Power, says that only those who make that transition will have a future in sales.

Currently, customer relationship management software, Salesforce, Zoho and InfusionSoft are now being used most for supporting a company’s sales team. Gartner has estimated that the customer relationship management software is now a $20 billion market, and that it will expand to be a $36 billion market by 2017. However, this kind of software may not be enough for influencing the outcome of deals. Howard Brown, founder of RingDNA, mentions that sales acceleration technology can be more powerful, because it provides sales intelligence data in a useful context and boost sales almost the same time. Notable companies making waves in this space include Yesware (providing email for sales teams), Inside View (with enhanced prospect data) and SalesLoft (offering a tool allowing for sales via social media).

Source:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237916

http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2013/07/sales-technology-trends.html

Can you imagine what your life will become when your car is able to run without a fuel tank or you are able to move your house without shipping your furniture? Cloud service does the similar thing to your life. With cloud service, use of storage devices can be minimized on our digital devices. By maximizing Internet’s power, we will be able to access all the data we want without necessarily carrying the storage devices.

I appreciate that person who came up the idea of cloud service. However, this newly born technology may also bring new troubles. For example, security risks are the first thing to worry about. What if somebody else accessed my data and did harm to me? What if the cloud server crashed and I lost all my files on it?

Could service certainly need to improve but there are things also for users to do, we take advantages of cloud and we avoid the risks. I have read an article from a website called Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of the Cloud. This article basically advice cloud users to manage their accounts in a better way instead of worrying too much about the security issues that might occur. I personally agree its idea.

It says “While the death of the password as a security linchpin is long overdue, it’s still the easiest point of access for users and hackers. Be sure your passwords are at least 15 characters long and include numbers, letters and special characters if possible.” It also suggests that we should make use of additional security options which many cloud servers offered.

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238061

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” –William Penn

Human beings may desire for many different things but time is what we always need to fulfill our desire. Creating technologies is not always a problem for us but it is always a problem that we have to make our technologies work better with limited time or space.

Here comes wearable technology. Not like cellphones or other pocket devices, wearable technology is physically “attached” to the user which means it is easier to access, it is not hard to understand why wearable technology is so popular already even though industry of wearable technology is not well developed yet. For instance, simple wearable devices like wrist watches never left human daily life since they were invented because people need them to manage time better.

Toronto startup Bionym has closed a $14-million (U.S.) funding round led by a number of high-profile investors, including Relay Ventures, Export Development Canada (EDC) and MasterCard. The product Bionym created is called Nymi band which provides a new platform for authenticating users’ identity while interacting with devices.

Recently, other wearable technologies like i-watch and MOTO-360 also gained a lot of attentions online. Simple technology does simple jobs. I think this idea will soon become the main-stream. We tear huge machines into wearable pieces and eventually everybody can act like intelligent machines. With wearable technology we are able to do whatever we want at anywhere and at anytime.In my opinion, soon wearable technologies will capture the digital markets since they are so desirable and they can eventually become the new platforms for digital markets.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-tools/small-business-briefing/wearable-password-maker-raises-14-million-in-funding/article20747520/