Reebok Fitness App - A Smart Way to Manage Workouts

With Nike and Adidas coming out with fitness apps, it was only a matter of time before Reebok entered this territory with its own set of fitness application. Named Reebok Fitness, this app is available on the Android and iOS platforms. This app is both, a calendar and a workout schedule that helps users keep track of their daily fitness regime and analyze it for a better perspective. Unlike other sports and fitness apps this doesn’t merely track activities but creates a truly varied exercise program. Users can customize the ratios of multiple activities over a given period and manually shift the schedule.

Getting Started With the App

Once the app is launched the users are prompted to create a new fitness program. They can set the duration of the program anything between 6 and 12 weeks long. The fitness program needs to have at least two activities among Walking, Running, Dance, Yoga and Training. Some users might find these activities a bit restrictive as they have to choose at least two out of the fixed list. However it is a well designed and developed app for users who fail to maintain their own workout schedule.

Once you have selected the options the app generates a daily fitness routine for weeks ahead which can be accessed using an account in the app. On the home screen the users are show the schedule for the next seven days. This allows them to track their daily activities and judge the progress of their fitness program. Users will also have access to videos and workout schedules from fitness experts on the official website.

To work according to the fitness program users need to tap on the screen for the corresponding day and a detailed fitness program appears. You will get an overview of the workout where all the activities to be performed are explained in detail. For example when the app prompts you to run if gives you details of the pace at which you should run and the breathing and rest videos. Once you are done with the activity you will have to tap on the ‘Yes I am done’ button.

Highlighting Features

On the top right-hand corner of the screen you will have access to some interesting features. You can set a timer for your running and other activities. There is also an ‘Achievements’ where you get a brief sense of your achievements with the fitness program with measurable statistics. You can track your completion rate, the best and worst performance in the workout schedule etc. To market its products Reebok has also included a store finder in the app where you can spot a Reebok store on the map or search for one using the Zip Code or the name of the city.

All in all this is a good app to get started with a fitness program. One of the biggest downsides of the apps is its inability to measure any of the activities using a body tracking device as it solely depends on user fed data. It comes free and is definitely worth a try.

Author Bio:

Sakshi Bhardwaj is working as Sr. Android Developer at Daffodil Software Ltd., a firm specialized in development of mobile applications for various platforms. Get in touch with Sakshi on Facebook here.

FileApp - A Perfect Solution for Managing Files on iPhone and iPad

Managing files on your iPhone and iPad can be quite complicated. This happens especially when you are sourcing different types of files into the device and are in habit of storing large number of documents, music and videos on your device. The inbuilt file management software works well in normal conditions where you need to store and access files on your device.

Problems crop up when files need to be transferred from a computer to your iOS powered device or between two iOS powered devices. In such a scenario you will need to complement the inbuilt file management mechanism with something special.

FileApp is one such solution which helps you effectively manage files. This app has seen thousands of downloads and has become very popular with the iPhone and iPad users worldwide. It is a very easy app to handle and takes little time for the user to get accustomed to it. The interface of the application is highly attractive and self-explanatory.

How To Get Started

Once the app is launched you can instantly start importing files by clicking on the (+) plus icon on the left hand corner of the screen. This app allows you to access files from third-party storage sources such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Box. These files can directly be downloaded into the devices by merely tapping the file name in the third-party sites and hitting ‘Done’. If you are planning to access files from a PC or Mac the app offers you a unique IP address. This IP address allows you to access these devices by typing it straight into the browser. Here you will be able to drag and drop files from the PC/Mac into your iPhone and iPad and vice versa. 

Grouping Files and Sharing

This app allows users to easily group different files and folders based on their types. All that a user needs to do is tap on the file and drag it to the preferred location within the application. With the help of this app you can easily share files with your friends and colleagues using the private and public Wi-Fi networks. The app also facilitates fast file transfers using the USB.

Accessing Files

You can also get a preview of the photos and videos on the app itself before you short them into different folders. However accessing PDF files is the most enjoyable experience on this application. You are aware how difficult it can get accessing PDF files on the iPhone. You can merely flick through the pages easily on this app which makes it a robust package.

The Verdict

Priced at $0.99 on the App Store FileApp is worth a deal thanks to the benefits it offers to the users. It only helps you manage the files in your iOS powered devices but does it really well. It is highly intuitive and engages the users. The only glitch sometimes it becomes unresponsive to finger gestures, but thousands of other apps face similar problems.

Author Bio:

This post has been contributed by Mr. Gaurav Sharma, Associate Manager - IT at Daffodil Software Ltd. Gaurav has 3+ years of experience in development of mobile applications and is managing development of apps for iPhone and iPad nowadays.

Magento Go, Enterprise or Community – which one is your cup of coffee?

There has not been any eCommerce platform which has received as many accolades and acclaim as the Magento Solution. Though it is pretty young in the circuit, having started in the year 2008, Magento has made the head turns and cash counters rolling. And now that it is under eBay, it has all the more become the ultimate destination for any merchant who wishes to sweep the online market off their feet (perhaps chair or couches or bed).

However the problem arises when we are expected to chose between its various versions. For the starters, let us inform you that there are primarily three different models of Magento – Magento Go, Community and the Enterprise one, and often it becomes a rather tricky task to choose between the three.

If you have been confronted with the same confounding and perplexing choice, we are here to help you out. Let us now discuss various models in detail and in the process, we believe you would be able to make the right choice of the Magento solution to opt for. We shall now start with Magento Go.

Magento Go!

The name definitely suggests something. Magento Go is a ready to use solution available, especially for all of the small scale business owners. It can give you a fully equipped and enigmatic online story quite easily; besides, you would not even need to install any software etc, in order to start using this solution. If you are one of those who need an online store, but do not want to suffer the technicalities, Magento Go is a ready made solution for you. Have a glance at some of its other features:

Design at your own whims and fancies – without any knowledge about the HTML or CSS, or any design knowledge as such, you can still design and create your own online store. It gives you a number of tools to decide the branding of your online store, pick up a logo, and use different text menus and buttons and a lot more. Besides, if you have a web designer at hand, Magento Go also provide you with the CSS editor to make further deep routed changes.

Easy product management and display – the product catalog is too wide to accommodate a vast variety of products. You may categorize and mark the products in the expansive catalog list and offer your visitors an effortless experience.

SEO friendly features – After all, it is the SEO that will help you get more visitors, right? Magento Go takes care of the SEO part as it has inbuilt SEO capabilities, allows you to change the URL, modify keywords, and creates sitemap and Google map amidst other things.

Customer engagement options – It seems like Magento Go wishes to all your work for you. After taking care of the design, product management and SEO of your online store, Magento Go also provides you with enough features, such as flexible coupons and banners etc to help you retain your customers.

And lastly, you can always enhance the functionality of your online store, by downloading specific plugins from Magento Connect.

Our Verdict – At such prices and with such functionalities, Magento Go definitely sounds like a great option, especially for such business owners who need a rather simple and sorted solution. Next in the queue is our take on the Enterprise version. Check it out.

Magento Enterprise

Without a doubt Magento Enterprise is an extension to Magento Go. A step ahead, it takes the services offered by Magento Go to an all new different level. Primarily designed for the mid level enterprises, Magento Enterprise solution offers the best of eCommerce features and functionalities. An exposure to wider audience, detailed product comparisons, personalized shipping, wider scalability, much increased transactions etc are just a few of the extra features offered by the Enterprise version.

The key role of Magento Enterprise is to allow you to provide you customers with a personalized experience. Hence, it makes segregations based on demographics and the nature of the shoppers, and also draw in the new customers through various offers. You get to display exclusive content, launch marketing campaigns, suggests offers and a lot more with the Enterprise version.

Certain features which are added to the Enterprise version, and were missing in the Go version are:

Reward Points
Gift Registry
Enhanced Customer Categorization and Targeting
Invitations, Events
Content Roll back

Even the payment is made easier. The version is totally secure for your customers to share the sensitive information. Besides, there is a brilliant range of payment gateways for them to use. And then of course, they can also pay by check and with a single page checkout, it is ensured that the entire payment is kept hassle free.

Our Verdict – if you have a big canvas and a bigger ambition, this is definitely the solution that you have been looking for. Lastly, let’s check out the Community version of the ace ecommerce publishing platform.

Magento Community

Lastly, enough of the assistance and the services provided by the Magento store, if you wish to take the development into your hand, download the free of charge community version and take off your online flight from there on. Usually you do not get the assistance in the community version, as against the assistance made available to you in the Go and the Enterprise version. But usually the users of Magento Community version are those web designing and development enthusiasts, who does not require any assistance. It is for them to alter the source code, add different features and attributes and give a new shame to Magento.

And it is not as if Magento completely abandons you in the community version. You still get a code level access to it and also, HTML 5 mobile theme is already integrated in it. Moreover, you get complete access to the themes, extensions, MCommerce, SEO friendly URLs, order management, multiple stores and multilingual support.

Our Verdict – if you trust your development and coding skills, go for it. It is brilliant, offers you a great deal of features and if absolutely free.

Author Bio:
This post has been contributed by Praveen Sharma, a Sr. Associate – Internet Marketing at Daffodil Software Ltd., a firm specilizes in magento web development. Get in touch with Praveen Sharma on Twitter at @i_praveensharma.

Cloud Computing - How It is Changing the Rules of Business?

Businesses have fast undergone change in the last two decades. With the advent of the Internet businesses started investing in information technology to gain the competitive edge. As reliance of digital communication increased businesses had to invest lot of capital on purchasing expensive servers and computers.

This gave the big businesses with large purchasing power an undue edge over their smaller competitors. However, cloud computing has completely changed the rules of the game and created a new ecosystem for information based industries. Businesses around the world are opting for this revolutionary technology which has added flexibility to business. In this brief write-up we shall take note of the advantages that Cloud Computing brings to businesses.

Reduced Server Cost

Perhaps the biggest advantage that Cloud Computing has to offer is in terms of reduced costs. Gone are the days when one would have to invest heavily on purchasing in-house servers and their upkeep. Today businesses are able to keep the same level of computing in their organizations by outsourcing their storage processing needs to the cloud servers. Also businesses don’t need to worry about upgrading their IT infrastructure every few years which used to be an expensive affair. Cloud computing is based on the concept of sharing resources which cuts costs substantially.

Reduced Infrastructure Cost

Not only did the cost of servers hurt business they also occupied large spaces and had to be maintained in controlled conditions. With Cloud Computing coming into the picture businesses no longer need to maintain expensive server rooms. They can operate from small offices or increase their headcount without having to worry about the office space. And all of us know how every inch of space can add to the operational cost of a business especially when it operates out of the upmarket areas. This has created level playing fields for small and big businesses as innovative ideas can materialize into big businesses from any corner in the world.

Flexibility of Work Location

In the last few years we have seen large number of people preferring to work from home rather than commuting to the office every day. This has not only added to the productivity but also reduced costs related to transportation and infrastructure for organizations. Cloud Computing makes it even more convenient for employees to work from home and access secured servers on the cloud.

In the cloud employees don’t need to be armed with expensive work-stations as all the data can be accessed from the cloud. The same project can be handled by a large team sitting in different locations across the globe without any hassle. No subscription to expensive VPNs is required for this purpose.

Cloud Computing is still at a very nascent stage and many more developments are expected to come into the picture in the next few years. When more businesses join the fray the costs will come down further adding to the competition which will eventually take the IT industry forward.

Author Bio:


Ashish Mittal is General Manager - IT with Daffodil Software Ltd. Connect with Ashish on Twitter at @mittals.

Common Problems With iPad - How To Troubleshoot Them

When it comes to tablets, the Apple iPad is surely the most sought after device in the market. It has a cult following in the market and does make a style statement. The popularity of the device can be judged from the fact that other tablets are often compared to iPads in order to rate them. Over 100 million iPads have been sold globally and their demands keep on soaring. 

Common Problems with iPad

In mere 4 years since its launch Apple has come out with the 4^th generation of the device. However the most prized gadget of its generation isn’t without its share of flaws. Here we shall take a look at some of the common problems with the iPad and how you can troubleshoot them. 

iPad Doesn’t Turn On       

  
This is the worst possible nightmare for any iPad owner. In such a scenario you shouldn’t assume the worst and try out some of the things below before you contact the Apple service center. 

• Hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button together till the Apple logo appears. It shouldn’t take more than 10 seconds for the logo to appear.  
• If the earlier step didn’t work it might be a case of an empty battery. Hook the iPad to the wall charger and let it charge for 30 minutes before you try the first step.

Screen Has Frozen    

          
This is one of the most common things that happens with the iPad. Your screen becomes totally unresponsive and doesn’t respond to your finger gestures. Now there can be multiple reasons for that but in most cases it is due to specific app. In such a case do the following  -

• Restart the device using the Sleep/Wake button. Wait till the screen says “slide to power off” on screen and then slide to power off. Turn on the device and the Apple logo shall appear.
• The second solution that you can opt for resetting the product. For this press the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons together for 10 seconds. The Apple logo shall appear and you are ready with your device.
• If the problem still persists you can restore the device. Plug the iPad onto your computer and load up iTunes. Select your iPad and go to the Summary tab, and hit the Restore iPad button. However keep in mind that it will erase all the content and thus you need back it up before this step.

iTunes Doesn’t Recognize iPad

It might so happen that your iTunes doesn’t recognize the iPad. In such cases here are two possible things that you should do - If iTunes isn’t recognizing your iPad then you can try a few things to solve the problem.

• Take note of the battery meter on the iPad and see if it denotes charging or not charging.  If it says not charging than there is some problem with the USB cable or the port.  
• If the iPad is charging than it is communicating with the computer. In such a case your iTunes might be the problem area. Make sure you have the latest version of the iTunes on your PC.  You can check for updates and install the latest updates.
• If you encounter the problem even with the latest version of the iTunes turn the iPad and the computer off and restate them.  You can also try uninstalling iTunes and reinstalling it on your computer as this tends to work in most cases.

These are some of the common problems and troubleshooting solutions. If you are still facing problems with the iPad it is advisable to contact an Apple service center instead of trying to fix it on your own. 

Author Bio:

This post has been contributed by Nathan Strauss, a professional blogger and Sr. consultant at Daffodil Software Ltd. Apart from guiding clients about Microsoft Sharepoint development, he loves to watch tennis and baseball. You can catch him at his Google plus account over here. 

- See more at: http://software-apps-development.blogspot.in/#sthash.0jQRa3eT.dpuf

Author Bio:

This post has been contributed by Nathan Strauss, a professional blogger and Sr. consultant at Daffodil Software Ltd. Apart from helping clients with iphone and ipad apps development, he loves to watch tennis and baseball. You can catch him at his Google plus account over here.

Features of Windows Azure that you are unaware of

Window Azure, a cloud OS has taken the world like a storm. With its multidisciplinary features and services, focusing on the needs of the present day enterprises which are striving in such a competitive and tight bound industry, the Azure is becoming a favorite of various enterprises, and their IT department to be exact. Hence we thought it made the most sense if we covered its various features and services, and help the users who are still in the dark, to get familiar with this amazing service.   

So let us now take on to each and every feature and service provided by Window Azure. Kindly read ahead.

WEBSITES

This feature of Window Azure allows the users to quickly organize various highly scalable websites. It also enables the users to use various languages and open source applications and organized various type of content using TFS, FTP and GIT. And that’s not all, with Window Azure you get various integration services, such as that with SQL Database, Content Delivery Network (CDN) Caching and Storage.

It will turn out to be a rather intelligent and cost saving investment, if you decide to develop the website using Window Azure. With scalability being its chief fetching feature, you get to extend the utility of the website as the traffic on your website increases. Also, if you wish to get one of those ephemeral websites, the ones which are always transitory and are often used only to promote a particular content or event or campaign etc, this is the best set of features that you will get to run the same.

VIRTUAL MACHINES

A much awaited retreat, the Virtual Machines is the chicken soup for the employees who have lost much of their sleep (and hair maybe) trying to figure out a way to deal with IaaS and Virtual Machines. With this, the IT department can easily provision infrastructure and organized various virtual machines, as per the demand. With the capabilities provided by Azure’s VM, you would hardly require a few minutes to configure Linux and Window Server in Cloud. Also, you can easily migrate the workload, shorten the processes, push notifications and a lot more, without even having to change the source code.

MOBILE SERVICES

This is by far one of the most precise and well structured turn key available for developing mobile applications. With help of mobile services from Azure, you can easily accelerate the mobile applications development process, incorporate structure storage, deploy user authentication, and push notifications and a lot more. Use it and you would know how effortless and seamless mobile application development has now evolved to become.

MEDIA SERVICES

As media becomes increasingly an important tool for the promotion and delivery, both in terms of social settings and professional, Window Azure’s Media Services come as a package poised for flourishing business opportunities and growth prospects. It has every right tool and protocol intact in its right place, which can be used to deliver content to a variety of devices such as iOS, Mac OS, Windows phone and Windows 8, Xbox, and Andorid etc. At the same time it ingests, encodes, converts and protects the content with various live and on demand streaming services.

CLOUD SERVICES

The cloud service being offered by PaaS, provides you with a runtime environment available on demand. The published API makes it rather simpler for the developers to develop or extend the pre existing enterprise applications. The applications thus scaled in Window Azure via PaaS are delivered to the clients as a SaaS solution.

BIG DATA

Managing the over explosion of data is one of the prime challenges faced by today’s enterprises. The boom in the field of social media networking sites and the increasing use of smart phones have now exposed the industry with a boom of data, which not only requires storage and processing but also analyzing and a system to derive useful information out of the data.

Faced with such a hard pressing and colossal need of the reality, Window Azure has now made available a complete 100% Apache Hadoop compatible, HD insight service which is ready to be used by any enterprise and delivers a wide range of structured and unstructured options for storing data. Also are available various tools to analyze the data and extract significant portions of it.

It may not look like an overnight solution to the colossal problem, but definitely is a step ahead in the direction. Like the optimists often are heard pitching – something is better than nothing and this, is definitely a lot more than something.

Have you embraced the responsive web design yet?

Has the responsive design fever caught up with you, yet? The same web design which appears wider at an instance and seems to intuitively shrink itself the moment you shrink the size of the browser? Well, this is not a gimmick on the part of web developers to hold users in awe, but this is, what we predict, the need of the hour – responsive web design. 

Responsive Web Design - Need of Today

Personal computers, a soon to be things of a past!

We have entered a critical dimension where the sales of smart phones and tablets are taking over the sales of our good old friends, the personal computers. Ever since 2001, 2012, for the first time saw a decline in the projected sales, as compared to the previous year. This is nothing but good news for the tablet industry as the sales of tablets are expected to cross the 100 million mark this year.

Besides, smart phones is a flourishing industry, and with key players like Apple and Samsung readily coming up with new and much more power packed and feature packed phones, who would want to go back to immobile and bulky counterpart?

Responsive Web Design – the deal clincher!

Given the 1000s of varying screens a person may use to browse through your website, the only solution left here is to build a website which can slip through various multi disciplinary screens, with the same amount of ease and perfection. Sounds crazy, right? But today, with the advent of responsive web design services, you can very easily achieve the same.

A responsive web design makes use of the media queries and intuitively figures out the resolution on which the device is working on. The liquid fluid grids and flexible images then actively adjust themselves as per the size of the screen. Thus, if you get to view a responsive web design on your desktop, by shrinking the size of the screen, you will have a responsive web design page shrink itself and adjust according to the parameters of the browser screen. Sheer genius it is.

The benefit of a responsive design is pretty simple and straight forward – you have to get it done for once, and then it will work seamlessly across a wide gamut of screens.

Keeping in mind the present day users and a wide variety of options available with them to view your website, the responsive web design is nothing but trampling on a pot of gold.

2013 is going to be responsive year, are you ready?

With experts predicting the same increasing surge in the tablet and smart phones industry and the fact that users find it much more convenient and luxurious to read the news via mobile instead of apps, one can safely presume that 2013 is going to be the year of responsive web design. For a website owner, a responsive web design means an easy way to reach out to a plethora of users, and for users, it means easy flexibility to access information through a number of devices.

We believe Ethan Marcotte, the author of Responsive Web Design, said it best about its need when he said, "Now more than ever, we’re designing work meant to be viewed along a gradient of different experiences. Responsive web design offers us a way forward, finally allowing us to 'design for the ebb and flow of things.'"