LSQHA Blog Reviews

Sugar CRM is launching a new user interface as part of Sugar 6. It comes with a focus on what is becoming a prerequisite: an emphasis on speed, search and deeper integration with third party applications and mobile devices. The speed issue is one that SaaS providers always seek to mitigate as they want the service to seem as responsive as if it were worked on the desktop. Sponsor To do this, Sugar CRM is providing a revamped set up that when completed is supposed to be optimized for speed and designed for the experience that comes with using a social network. It includes a new, global search, another effort to optimize the experience for the end user. Search is becoming increasingly critical as more data is available for integration with third party apps. Sugar CRM will strengthen its search with an open-source engine such as Lucene . SugarCRM is paying close attention to the user experience, knowing it is a key to acceptance among users of CRM environments. SugarCRM also includes native application support for the iPhone Android and the Blackberry. The company has also introduced a native app for the iPad. Application integration is the hallmark of the emerging social CRM application. SugarCRM fits with LinkedIn, Hoovers and Jigsaw through its Cloud Connectors service, which connects third-party data service. SugarCRM also works with Sugar Plug-Ins for Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel. But can't this all become a bit overwhelming? All this data flowing into one CRM environment means that the customer needs to think carefully how to organize, discover and share what comes into the network. That's why it makes sense that a search and potentially analytics component will become standards for services like SugarCRM. It's also why SugarCRM has a certain advantage. Open-source platforms will thrive in the data deluge to come. Third-party services become critical as components that make sense of internal and external information. It's just a matter of how those applications are applied so customers can get relevant information that they need for the opportunity at hand. Discuss

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SugarCRM: Speed, Search and the Data Deluge

Last night, Opera announced that its mobile browser, Opera Mini, had been accepted into the iTunes AppStore after being submitted just under three weeks ago . So, now that the iPhone finally has a browser alternative, how does it fare in comparison? Is it worth running out and getting or should we just stick with the safe old Safari and move on with our day? If you've used Opera Mini for other mobile platforms, such as Blackberry or Android, then its pretty much the same. But, for those of you like myself that haven't, here's what we have to say about it. Sponsor Opera Mini is a full-featured browser that brings some things to the table but falls short on others. While we enjoy the tabbed browsing in comparison to Safari, the zoom feature is not our favorite. We're not quite sure if you actually have to do the pinch gesture to zoom or if a double finger tab does it - the mechanics of it are a bit off. And if, like myself, you have some stubby nubs for fingers then the inability to zoom in as much as you want can be a problem for tightly packed UIs. A main hitch in using Opera on the iPhone, however, is the inability to set it as your default browser. Opening up links in your Twitter client will still bring you back to Safari, as will opening up PDF files in Opera. You're constantly reminded that Opera is number two in line and, even if you place it in the dock at the bottom of your screen, Safari is never far behind. We asked Opera if the iPhone version would be able to take advantage of HTML5 and Javascript and were told that, while Javascript works "surprisingly well", a spokesperson could not say that Opera Mini "takes full advantage of HTML5". Opera also told us that the iPhone version will generally work with bookmarklets for services like InstaPaper and ReadItLater. In all, Opera seems like a viable alternative to Safari on the iPhone, but we're not sure that it can take over the number one spot. It has some bells and whistles, like the frequently-visited page startup page, but without being able to set it as the default browser, it will likely remain a second class citizen. What do you think? Will you be switching over to Opera for the iPhone, to whatever extent that you can? Discuss

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Opera Takes a Back Seat to Safari on the iPhone

Norway-based browser company Opera has announced it will be available at the iTunes app store for download into Apple products. "Opera Mini has been approved for iPhone and iPod touch on the App Store," the company announced . "Opera Mini will be available as a free download within 24 hours, depending on market." Sponsor Opera is a significant mobile player and the ability to tap the iPhone and iPod markets may boost that play. Opera has broken the 100 million user mark but lags on the desktop. Prior to this, as ReadWriteWeb has noted, the iPhone has remained off-limits for any browser besides Apple's own Safari. Their early February notice that they would be developing for the iPhone was thought possibly be primarily a public relations act. Not so. Features include the following. Easy to sync phone with computer Speed Dial gets user to a website with a single tap Address field with auto-completion Tabs allow for multitasking with several Web pages Bookmarks easily managed and accessed If Opera sells, and works well, for iPhone and iPod Touch users, perhaps other browsers will make their way into the orchard. Discuss

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Opera in iTunes

Last week brought two major announcements from Twitter. On Thursday, the company announced an official application for BlackBerry. On Friday, Twitter announced that it had purchased Atebits, the makers of the iPhone app Tweetie . Over the weekend, there was substantial discussion and a fair amount of hand-wringing by third-party developers, many expressing their frustrations about the company's direction. Attempting to reassure developers in advance of next week's Chirp conference, Twitter API lead Ryan Sarver responded by email to some of these concerns. Sponsor Certainly Twitter isn't the only company at the center of debates about control of a platform (Apple, Google, and Microsoft come to mind), but in light of the flurry of responses to Twitter's moves, it is worth considering some of the (perhaps contradictory) lessons for startups that can be gleaned from the past week's events. Find your niche : Much of the third-party development on Twitter has served to address gaps in the original product: mobile clients, URL shorteners, photo sharing, and search for example. As VC and Twitter investor Fred Wilson argued in a blog post early last week that tipped the hand, perhaps, to where Twitter was headed, there is still room for the development of "killer apps" in social gaming, enterprise, and analytics. Innovate and adapt : Find your niche, but then be prepared to innovate and adapt. Some have suggested that Twitter's acquisition of Tweetie might not bode well for other Twitter clients like Seesmic and Tweetdeck , unless the two can continue to innovate. By adding new features unavailable via the Twitter website, and by linking streams from Facebook and LinkedIn, they have established themselves as more than just a Twitter client - but the pressure is certainly on for these to continue to distinguish themselves from the official Twitter applications. "Of course we're hole fillers," Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur admits , explaining that while that's a good place to start, it isn't the right place to end. Look beyond the platform : As Mark Suster writes of both Twitter and the iPhone, it is important to think beyond the platform, contending that startups should not think of Twitter "as a business but rather as a channel." In other words, a platform like Twitter should be a used as a way to reach customers but, unless you're Twitter, should not be the vehicle itself. If this is the " inflection point " for Twitter, the tasks for startups will be to learn the lessons from this critical juncture in the platform's history, balancing the sometimes contradictory needs for specificity and flexibility and innovation and stability. Discuss

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What Can Startups Learn from Last Week's Twitter Announcements?

Microsoft announced a new phone this morning called the Kin . It's all about being social: putting the stream of updates from your friends on Facebook and Twitter at the center of the experience, dragging photos to share them on the web, etc. It's a Zune phone, it will be on Verizon exclusively and no pricing information is available yet. At first glance this looks like a lightweight device aimed at people who don't want to pay for an iPhone and for whom apps are less important than a strong focus on social networking. That might have made sense a year ago when Microsoft bought Danger, the makers of the Sidekick and the system the Kin seems to be built on, but does it still make sense today? I don't think so. Sponsor Social networking is no longer the destination, it's now the context. It's the identity that people use to log-in to apps and share the results back to their friends. Mobile phones are about powerful, intriguing apps, these days. Analyst firm Piper Jaffray reported this morning , for example, that teen intent to purhase the iPhone has doubled over the last year to 31% - and that despite the cost. It's because of the apps. The user experience plus huge store full of apps plus marketing make the Apple world very hard to beat on mobile. Where are the apps for the Kin? There doesn't appear to be any, other than the built-in features like automatic online backup of photos and the creation of a photo timeline. It's important to give people access to Facebook, Twitter and MySpace - but is that really enough anymore? I'd argue that it's not. The Apple app store has so caught the imagination of so many people, that's where the action and excitement are on mobile. Perhaps that's just among the slightly more geeky though, perhaps a low-cost Facebook phone will win the hearts of millions. Six months ago the Palm Pixi was mentioned as a low-cost app-savvy mobile phone that could increase youth use of smartphones , but it doesn't appear that that's happened. Probably in large part because the Palm app store is paltry. Many young people buy feature phones and supplement them with iPod Touches - for the apps. That still sounds like the smartest move for the young people being targeted by the Kin. That way you get the apps you want without a monthly data plan. Maybe the Kin will have a strong mobile browser and support the growth of a non-native, web based app ecosystem. That's not the way it's being framed, though. Maybe I just don't get the appeal: the promo copy honestly says that among the things the Kin will hold is "your drama." That sounds frightening to me. What do you think, do you think a social phone is sufficiently compelling for users? Discuss

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Microsoft's New Phone Gets the Social/App Balance Wrong