The browser wars could be set for a new battle in the enterprise space following a raft of new updates from Microsoft Edge.
The browser has unveiled a host of new additions at the company's Microsoft Build event, including a new “experience” that is targeted purely at workplace users.
The new Microsoft Edge for Business experience comes with a whole new look and feel to the browser itself, as well as boosted security protections and even some useful productivity apps to help you get the most out of your working day.
Microsoft Edge for Business
“To more fully realize our mission to deliver the best browser for business, we’re evolving Microsoft Edge to have a dedicated work experience,” the company noted in a blog post.
“With the rich set of enterprise controls, security, and productivity features that you’re already familiar with, Edge for Business is designed to help meet the evolving security landscape while empowering users to work effectively.”
Microsoft says its new approach also looks to solve problems created by hybrid work, where people may use the same device for personal and business use, raising potential security issues for IT teams.
This can often lead to the need for supporting multiple browsers on such devices, increasing the risk of cyberattacks and also causing a drop in performance.
Microsoft Edge for Business automatically separates work and personal browsing into dedicated browser windows, each with their own separate caches and storage locations, so information stays separate.
This means that work-related services such as Microsoft 365 apps or sites requiring your work login will automatically open in the work browser window, whereas other popularly-used sites will open in the personal window.
Users can switch between the two windows thanks to a button on the taskbar, meaning a change is just a click away.
These options can be changed at any time, and admins can also enforce certain restrictions if need be. Microsoft Edge for Business is launching in preview for managed devices now, and will be coming to unmanaged devices soon.
Elsewhere, the company also revealed the general launch of Microsoft Edge Workspaces, which allow teams of co-workers to collaborate on projects or content in a specially-defined location.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
The service allows Edge users to share multiple groups of tabs and favorites with colleagues that can be built to accommodate numerous projects and teams.
Microsoft Edge Workspaces has only been in preview for some business users up til now, but the company says it will be generally available to all users within the next few months.
Learning how to use POS system customer data means you can exploit a wealth of information about your customers. This can give you an edge on building up relationships and brand loyalty. In that respect, the best point of sale (POS) systems offer businesses so much more than just a fantastic payment experience.
Many, if not the majority of POS (point of sale) systems on the market today, have sophisticated customer shopping behavior analytics, which are often built in. So what's the best way to use all that amazing POS data?
Monitoring these analytics is the first step in gleaning insights into the the people who walk through your doors or shop with you online. POS system customer data is an endless source of insight that can help you build out a promotional sales calendar, create content about popular products and offer data-backed marketing to your mailing list – but only if you act on it.
Exploiting your POS data to make new shoppers loyal regulars is the second and most important step. How you use that POS system customer data can cause a spike in sales or deliver free word-of-mouth marketing for your business.
In this article, we’ll shed light on nine inspired ways to use POS system customer data for insight in your retail business.
1. Serve up relevant product suggestions
This is one of the low-hanging fruits when it comes to POS data. Knowing what shoppers have purchased before makes it simpler to suggest products they might be interested in.
If a customer bought items from certain brands or categories in the past, you can use that data to market similar items in the future. Be sure to get their feedback on those suggestions too and involve them in the process. Over time, your product suggestions become increasingly accurate.
The department store Nordstrom does this really well. The retailer takes note of specific purchases by its customers (e.g., cosmetics, designer products, etc.) and sends tailored product recommendations, based on the buying history of a shopper and their preferences.
(Image credit: Nordstrom)
When marketing to new customers, you can use the purchase histories of shoppers with a similar profile to make appropriate product recommendations.
Amazon is a master at this, which is why all of its product pages contain the section “People who viewed this also viewed…”
(Image credit: Amazon)
Consider doing something similar in your small business marketing initiatives. Pay attention to what people are buying and use that information to create relevant messages and suggestions.
2. Make timely product recommendations
Use your POS system to make timely product recommendations all year round, not just during national holidays. (Image credit: Pexels)
You can also use POS data to inform the timing of your customer marketing campaigns or promotions. By knowing when a customer bought something, you can make an educated guess on what they’ll buy next or when they would need to replenish their supplies.
We can see this in action in the supplements store Acupuncture Atlanta. When you purchase a product – e.g., a bottle of vitamins – the store takes note of when you made the purchase and sends an email around the time when the vitamins are about to run out.
(Image credit: Acupuncture Atlanta)
If you sell items that need to be refilled, take a leaf out of Acupuncture Atlanta’s playbook and schedule reminders that encourage customers to repurchase your products.
3. Know your top customer segments
In addition to shedding light on what people are buying, your POS data also tells you who your best customers are. That data is incredibly valuable, especially if you want to home in on your target market.
Knowing what types of shoppers are buying from you the most can help you tweak your brand messaging, figure out which retail marketing channels to invest in and decide what types of promotions to offer.
Let’s say you’re an apparel retailer and you discover that your top customers are women aged between 28 and 35. Armed with that information, you can come up with campaigns and assets that incorporate images and ad copy that these women can relate to.
4. Improve your store’s layout and merchandising
(Image credit: Future)
At a loss for ideas on how to merchandise your store? Turn to your POS data. Identify things like:
Your best sellers
Top colors or sizes
Items frequently bought together
Having the data above can inform decisions such as what items to display and how to merchandise your mannequins, windows and so on.
For example, if you know that customers typically buy a purse with a specific pair of shoes, then you can create a display showcasing those items together. Or, if a particular color is flying off the shelves, then you can put it front and center at your store so customers can see it.
Whatever the case may be, take the time to go through your sales and customer reports and identify trends that you can use in your in-store merchandising and design decisions.
5. Come up with effective promotional ideas
In the same way that POS data helps you merchandise your store, that same information can also give your promotional ideas. Insights into your top categories or products can aid you in determining which items to spotlight in your promo materials.
In some cases, you can use sales data to drive a sense of urgency. If an item is selling quickly, you can indicate that in your advertising to entice people to purchase right away.
Some retailers choose to highlight popular items in their marketing when products that were previously sold out become available.
Have a look at this example from UNTUCKit, which spotlights the fact that the brand's best selling polo shirt is back in stock.
(Image credit: Untuckit)
6. Determine what types of product packages or bundles to sell
Selling item bundles or packages can be an effective strategy to move your inventory. Many retailers, for example, bundle popular products with slow-moving items to help get the latter out the door. In certain instances, a bundle containing high and low-margin items allows merchants to maximize their profits.
That said, bundles work best when you know which items go well together. And that’s where your POS data comes in.
Identify the merchandise that your customers typically buy at the same time, then calculate your pricing and margins to ensure that bundling up those products makes sense from a financial standpoint.
7. Figure out what to stock up on (and what not to order)
POS system sales reporting tools allow you to look into customer spending behaviour and use that insight when stocking up. (Image credit: Matthew Henry via Burst)
Knowing which products are most popular among your shoppers enables you to make smarter inventory decisions.
If you have a solid handle on what your bestsellers are (and why they’re so popular) you can stock more of those products. Then, put your least popular stock on sale to move it quickly and make space for best-selling items.
You can take things a step further by using POS system customer data to predict trends and determine which items to add to your catalog. On the flip side, it’s also important to know which products are no-sell duds, so you can avoid stocking them in your shop again.
8. Make decisions on what to put on sale
(Image credit: Markus Spiske via Unsplash)
Speaking of duds, you need to keep a close eye on the items that shoppers aren’t buying. The sooner you can figure out what products aren’t resonating, the more time you’ll have to correct course.
For instance, if a certain dress style or brand isn’t selling, you’ll want to know sooner rather than later so you can put it on sale. That way you can also ensure that the person in charge of purchasing stock doesn’t re-order that particular item.
9. Improve staff knowledge and customer service
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Thanks to the internet and our smartphones, consumers today are more well-informed than ever. Research by Tulip Retail found that 80% of consumers believe that they’re more knowledgeable than retail associates.
To that end, you can stay competitive by instilling knowledge, skills and confidence in your staff. In doing so, you’ll show customers that your employees are product experts who can guide shoppers in their purchasing decisions.
You can accomplish that by giving your team access to your POS system customer data. When your staff members know what items are trending and when they’re aware of each shopper’s purchase history, they’ll be in a much better position to assist and impress your customers.
Bringing it all together
Your POS system customer data can improve various components of your business. From retail marketing and sales to inventory management, having the right information at your fingertips can truly be a game-changer.
So, aside from knowing how to use POS systems or how POS systems work, it’s important to know how to extract the right data from your platform. Doing so will enable you to make smarter decisions so you can grow and thrive.
Windows 11 is getting some fine-tuning around how default app selections are handled and how apps are pinned on the desktop, making these systems work better and with more overall consistency.
XDA Developers spotted that Microsoft wrote a blog post on its new ‘principled approach’ to these app behaviors, with the incoming changes set to arrive in testing (Dev channel) in the “coming months,” we’re told.
The first measure to be implemented is with app defaults. Windows 11 will get a new Settings deep link URI (uniform resource identifier), allowing developers to take users directly to the correct place in Settings whenever any given app flags itself up as wanting to be the default.
The default app is the software which is opened automatically for a specific file format, so for example, your default browser is the one used when you click a link in, say, an email.
Secondly, Microsoft is changing the way that pinning apps – putting icons permanently on the Start menu or taskbar – works, by introducing a new notification. In the case that an app wants to request being pinned, this notification will pop up explaining just that, allowing the user to either click Accept or Decline.
Crucially, the software giant wants consistency with these interface tweaks, so all third-party software, and Microsoft’s own core apps for Windows 11, work the same way and abide by these rules. That’s the plan, anyway, although whether things work out this neatly, we’ll just have to wait and see.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Analysis: Defending against dodginess, and making up for past mistakes
As made clear in its blog post, part of Microsoft’s aim with this tweaking of app behavior is defending against “unrequested modifications” from dodgy developers. In other words, things happening in the background unbeknownst to the user, and the likes of adware or other rogue software managing to infiltrate into the system.
It’s also designed, no doubt, to reassure Windows 11 users that Microsoft is putting the past well and truly behind it regarding the firm’s own policies on default apps, which have been a source of criticism previously.
You might remember that when Windows 11 first launched, Microsoft made it an unnecessarily clunky process to change browser defaults away from its own Edge product (you had to go through every file type and change the preference individually, such as HTML, PDF and so on – a ridiculous state of affairs, really).
Indeed, Microsoft even mentions its browser specifically in the post, noting that: “We are committing that Microsoft Edge will release an update that adopts the new Settings deep link URI for defaults and public pinning APIs as they become available.”
At any rate, this is a welcome move, although in all honesty, app defaults should never have appeared in the state they were when Windows 11 was launched in the first place. Mind you, the same could be said about a number of things in the Windows 11 interface upon its release, with the OS having very much been a work in progress as Microsoft has gone along.
Sitting through another unnecessary Microsoft Teams call may soon be a thing of the past thanks to a new addition to the service.
Microsoft has revealed it is working on a feature for its video conferencing tool that will allow users to adapt their Microsoft Teams status ahead of proposed meetings.
The feature should mean that users will be able to flag when they are free for a Microsoft Teams meeting, or alternately when they are too busy to attend, or are out of the office.
Microsoft Teams Calendar update
In the official Microsoft 365 roadmap entry for the new feature, officially titled, “Microsoft Teams: Calendar Show As in meetings”, Microsoft explains how it could benefit users with packed schedules.
The company notes how it would allow both organizers and participants of a Microsoft Teams meeting to choose a “Calendar Show As” status to reflect their availability, with options including free, busy or OOF.
Organizers will also be able to select private meeting functionality, which will allow users to hide meeting details from other users when their calendar is shared.
The feature is still listed as in development for now, with Microsoft estimating a general release date in June 2022. The company says that, when available, the addition will be provided to all PC and Mac users.
The update is the latest in a series of features introduced by Microsoft in an attempt to make hybrid working and online collaboration less painful for users across the globe.
The company recently revealed a separate update entitled “working hours and location” will allow users to set a notice showing where they are working, whether that be at home, in the office, or anywhere else in particular, giving managers more visibility on where their key employees are.
Users of its Outlook email service will also be able to display a second calendar type, with the company noting that users will have “a variety of global calendars” to choose from, including the likes of the Chinese lunar calendar, Indian calendar and the Islamic calendar will soon be available as options within Outlook, so certain holidays or observances are not missed.
Microsoft is looking to take some of the strain out of learning on the job with a new expansion to its Viva platform.
In a new entry on the Microsoft 365 roadmap, the company revealed that users will soon be able to discover Viva learning content directly through SharePoint, Office.com and Bing.
Previously, users had only been able to access such content through the video conferencing platform Microsoft Teams, with the move now opening up a whole new range of opportunities.
Microsoft Viva expansion
Microsoft says that the new update is an integration between Viva Learning and Microsoft Search, meaning actually being able to find the right content that is applicable to your workers should also be a lot quicker and easier now.
The roadmap entry notes that the feature is still in development for the moment, but Microsoft has said it hopes to issue a release in March 2022. When complete, the feature will be available for all Microsoft Viva web users around the world.
Launched in February 2021, Microsoft Viva integrates with Teams and other Windows software tools to operate as a kind of intranet that brings together knowledge, learning, and communication services.
The platform was launched with remote working policies in mind, and is made up of four main pillars, one of which is Viva Learning. Microsoft says the offering is geared towards employee development and allows members of staff to share, assign, and learn from an organization’s training material, helping speed up onboarding and training processes.
Asides from learning and training, Viva also looks to support employee wellbeing and combat issues such as loneliness and burnout.
Microsoft also revealed a series of guided meditations and mindful exercises for the platform which users will be able to access via Microsoft Teams as it looks to help workers de-stress and become more productive.
A VoIP gateway is, at its simplest, a device – or bridge – that converts call traffic into data packets to be transmitted over the internet.
This happens in one of two ways:
1. When the call traffic originates from a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and needs to be converted from an analog voice signal into a digital one. The digital signal is then compressed using what’s known as a ‘codec’ and broken into a series of ‘data packets’ that are transferred across the Internet Protocol (IP) network.
2. When the call traffic originates from an IP network, then the VoIP gateway will decompress the data packets into a digital signal that’s then converted into an analog signal to be sent across the PSTN.
These data packets are the lifeblood of any internet call system as they dictate call quality – data packet loss can result in poor quality calls that frustrate employees and customers alike and can even have a negative impact on your business.
With traditional phone systems, one call is converted at a time, whereas with a VoIP gateway, multiple calls are supported simultaneously, increasing call capacity for busy companies.
VoIP gateway systems typically include the following features:
⚫ Voice and fax compression / decompression
⚫ Packetization and control signalling management
⚫ Call routing
⚫ External controller interfaces
Why was the VoIP phone late to the meeting…? It got hung up in traffic!
You can always tell when a new piece of tech becomes commonplace – the corny jokes start doing the rounds!
And it’s easy to see why VoIP has recently followed this well-trodden path given our remote ways of working since 2020.
But what about a VoIP gateway? It’s perhaps a term that is less common right now but is likely to see increasing usage in the coming months and years as more and more companies continue to switch to digital phone systems and look for ever more efficient ways of managing call traffic.
In this article, we’ll set out what a VoIP gateway is, how it works, what the different types of gateway are, and how to set one up.
VoIP gateways offer many benefits, the biggest of which is the ability to spread out and manage costs more effectively. (Image credit: Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels)
VoIP gateways have many benefits, especially for businesses transitioning from one type of call system to another.
With VoIP gateways, you can, for example, migrate in phases, keeping your existing hardware in place to keep new costs down. By using existing equipment, you subsequently reduce training and set-up times for your teams.
The biggest benefit of a VoIP gateway is, therefore, one of cost. Changing over an entire office or organization to VoIP can be costly – in addition to the cost of new equipment, there’s the infrastructure and IT support costs to factor in too. With a VoIP gateway, however, these costs are more easily managed and can be spread out over a longer period of time – something most Finance Directors and CFOs will be very glad of!
What’s more, you can choose a VoIP gateway system that optimized for minimal or ‘Least Cost Routing’ by directing specific calls to the provider that will charge the least per minute.
In addition to this, VoIP servers can and often fail. VoIP gateways, however, have what are called ‘fallback’ modes that switch to the PSTN if the internet is down.
What a lot of businesses opt for nowadays is a ‘hybrid’ approach that combines on-site equipment with VoIP gateways. This enables them to get many of the advantages of VoIP while still retaining their existing infrastructure and equipment that they know to be reliable and familiar.
Oh, and watch out for what are called ‘Fully Hosted IPBX systems’ – they’re also a growing trend nowadays as they offer a full telecommunication system without the hassle of buying and managing additional hardware. However, if for any reason you lose your connection to the hosted IPBX, you lose the ability to make both internal and external calls.
What are the different types of VoIP gateway?
There are two main types of VoIP gateway, analog and digital.
Analog
As the name suggests, an analog VoIP gateway is used to connect your traditional analog telephones to a VoIP phone system, or to connect your VoIP phone system to the PSTN. These gateways are typically available for between 2 and 24 lines and come in two different forms, both of which often appear as ‘media gateways’ to:
FXS (Foreign Exchange Subscriber) gateway – used to connect your traditional telephones (and fax machines) to a VoIP phone system.
FXO (Foreign Exchange Office) gateway – used to connect your VoIP phone system to your PSTN lines.
Digital
Once again, the clue is in the name! Digital gateways are used to connect your VoIP phone system to your digital voice lines – either BRI ISDN lines (for Europe), PRI / E1 lines (for Europe), or T1 lines (in the US).
Other terms it’s worth knowing about when exploring VoIP gateway solutions are:
VoIP GSM Gateway
GSM stands for Global System for Mobile Communications and is used for routing IP, digital, analog, and GSM networks directly. With these devices, companies can take advantage of the ‘Least Cost Routing’ option that we mentioned earlier.
PSTN Gateway
A PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) gateway is a third-party hardware component that converts signalling and media between the Enterprise Voice infrastructure and the PSTN, either directly or through connection to SIP trunks (more on SIPs and SIP trunks here).
It very much depends on your existing phone system as to which gateway solution is best. If you’re currently running on analog, then you’ll need an Analog Gateway. If you want to upgrade on flexibility though, then you should consider a Digital solution. And if cost optimization is high on your priority list, then it’s worth exploring the VoIP GSM Gateway option.
How do you set up a VoIP gateway?
Setting up a VoIP gateway should be done by your IT administrator or external supplier. (Image credit: Photo by ANTONI SHKRABA from Pexels)
The specifics of setting up and configuring a VoIP gateway will very much depend on the system you have. You’ll usually be able to find detailed instructions with your supplier either via their website or their support line. For example, beroNet, one of the most popular gateway solutions, explain their beroNet configuration process online. Or Grandstream, another supplier, has their own detailed set-up instructions for Grandstream gateways online.
The basic steps are pretty similar across solutions.
What you’ll need before getting started:
An internal telephone device with external connectivity through VoIP via the Internet.
The PSTN interface to a telephone network, with IP connectivity to an in-house VoIP phone system.
Both PSTN and VoIP interfaces externally.
Steps to follow to setup a VoIP gateway:
Step 1
Find and note the gateway’s network IP.
Log in via the device’s web interface and update your firmware to the latest version.
Assign a static IP and note it down.
Step 2
Configure the VoIP gateway in your admin or management console.
You can typically do this by clicking on ‘SIP Trunks’ and then ‘Add gateway’. Here you’ll be asked for details such as the model, number of device ports and main trunk number.
You’ll also need to add the hostname or IP of the VoIP gateway and any Direct Inward Dialling (DID) numbers.
Step 3
Once you have created the VoIP gateway connection, you’ll need to generate a device config file. Depending on your solution, that will either configure remotely or download a file to your computer. If the latter, you’ll then need to upload these to the gateway.
Step 4
Your final step is to create ‘Outbound Rules’ to route calls over the PSTN gateway. You can do this via the ‘Outbound Rules’ function of your device.
You’re all set!
If at any point you get stuck, then contact your gateway device supplier or IT administrator.
The telecommunications world has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, with many businesses now relying on VoIP for their core operations. VoIP Gateway is additionally a common method for businesses looking to ease the transition to VoIP technology while still leveraging existing equipment and IT infrastructure.
Pardon the pun, but it’s an excellent ‘gateway’ to a much easier and more efficient VoIP system that helps to reduce IT costs and keep your business running. What’s more, the benefits of VoIP gateways make them a smart choice when trying to spread out upgrade costs while still retaining a professional, high call quality system.
Workers looking to experience a host of the most popular Google Workspace software can now try for free thanks to a new offering from the company.
The new Google Workspace Essentials plan provides access to the likes of Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and more as the company looks to offer its online collaboration tools to more businesses than ever before.
What's more, you don't even need a Gmail account to sign up – and it's absolutely free.
Free Google Workspace
“We’re rolling out a new version designed to help people bring the apps they know and love to use in their personal lives to their work life,” Kelly Waldher, Vice President of Marketing, Google Workspace, wrote in a blog post.
“The new Google Workspace Essentials Starter Edition is a no-cost solution for business users looking to enhance teamwork and unlock innovation with secure-by-design collaboration. With Essentials Starter, we’re making it easy for employees to choose their own productivity tools and bring modern collaboration to work.”
There are some caveats to the plan, as users will only get 15GB of cloud storage, down from the usual 30GB available with the basic Google Workspace Business Starter plan, which typically costs $ 6/user/month.
There's also obviously no access to Gmail either, but users will be able to hold Google Meet video conferences of up to 100 people for up to an hour, as well as access to Spaces, Google Chat, Sheets, Slides and Docs.
The news comes as something of a surprise, given Google had recently said it would be cutting down on users accessing Google Workspace for free.
The company announced that all G Suite legacy free edition users would soon be shifted over to a paid version of Google Workspace from July 1 in order to ensure they kept access to tools such as Gmail, Meet and Docs.
This had upset users who may have recently signed up for the software, particularly non-business users facing having to pay for the first time, with Google saying that anyone not signed up to a paid subscription by the July deadline faced being locked out.
Google Workplace plans start at $ 6/user/month for its Business Starter option, with Business Standard ($ 12/user/month) and Business Plus ($ 18 /user/month) also on offer, providing an increasing level of services with the amount paid.
Google plans to automatically upgrade free users from May 1 to “an upgraded Google Workspace paid subscription”, based on its analysis of the customer's usage and the features it thinks you'll need. The company is also offering businesses who don't want to pay or upgrade the chance to export their data at no extra cost.
Making sure your work gets the respect it deserves will soon be a lot easier in Google Docs thanks to a new privacy tool coming to the service.
The word processor tool, part of Google Workspace, has announced users can now add background text identifiers such as watermarks to their documents.
This means that Google Docs users can now mark their work in order to protect copyright, show that the information within is confidential, or simply notify readers that it is a draft or work in progress.
Google Docs watermark
In a blog post outlining the new feature, Google notes that text watermarks will repeat on every page on your document, making it useful for indicating file status.
Users can also include an image watermark, such as a company logo or sign, or include other images above or behind text. To find the new feature, which has no admin control, users simply need to go to Insert > Watermark > Text.
The feature will work across other platforms too, as when working with Microsoft Word documents, text watermarks will be preserved when importing or exporting your files.
(Image credit: Google Workspace)
The tool will be available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers, with the rollout starting in January 2022 and due to take a few weeks.
The news should be a boost to legal and high-end businesses dealing in confidential documents, and comes shortly after a further new functionality also looked to add greater depth to Docs that sees a new process for formal document approvals for high-priority files (such as contracts, legal documents and the like), building upon existing comment and suggested edit features.
Google Docs has also recently boosted its citations feature, making the software a more viable choice for students and academics. When adding a citation to an essay or research paper, users will soon be able to search for sources via an in-built database, and then automatically populate the necessary fields (title, publisher, date of publication etc.).
Every week I’m sent apps that are meant to help or solve a situation for users that haven’t been done before. But I was sent a particular app this week that made me rethink how a note-taking app should work.
Created by Rihab Mehboob, Note Yourself was released this week (January 20) for iOS and macOS devices that use the Apple Silicon chips, where you can note down your thoughts and your plans, but in a chat interface.
You may think, as I did at the start, that this sounds like a combination that simply can’t work. It sounds like having sugar on your Weetabix, or playing Banjo Kazooie on an iPad. But the more I’ve used Note Yourself, the more I’ve been impressed.
You’re brought to a layout that looks as though you’re going to start a conversation with yourself, and you can jot down something that you can set to remind you after a certain amount of time. You can also pin some of these entries to easily go back to, all in a very simple but elegant layout.
I’ve been using the app already for a shopping list at the weekend, and, unashamedly, the daily tasks I need to complete for Fortnite. It wasn’t long before I promoted the icon to my main home screen on my iPhone, and after speaking to some of the TechRadar team alongside some family, I was surprised to find that some do indeed jot down notes by sending messages to themselves over WhatsApp, WeChat, and iMessage. Is this the app they, and so many others, have been waiting for?
And when you consider a messaging layout with notes, could the same logic be applied to a music app? Or a storefront? It’s apps like Note Yourself that feel fresh, 14 years since the App Store first appeared, and it makes me wonder what other apps could be coming in 2022. I reached out to Mehboob to ask what made him design Note Yourself in the first place.
A chat with Note Yourself’s developer
I spoke with Mehboob after last night’s launch to ask why he thought this layout would work better for a notes app. “To keep track of various tasks, I used to message myself through iMessage, and after realizing I could make a dedicated app, with many features, I began making this app,” Mehboob explains. “I personally really like the idea of themed apps, where an app takes the style of another genre – and I think this was a great demonstration of that.”
(Image credit: Rihab Mehboob)
After trying out many apps in this category over the years, I wanted to know why he thought this stood out, apart from the different layout. “It may not be as serious or feature-filled as some great note-taking apps, but it's a fun attempt at changing things up.” Mehboob continues. “I really like the UI/UX myself, and I love adding interesting features like the new iOS 15 Communication Notifications (to make it seem as if the notes you are receiving are being sent by others) and pinned messages, which to stand out I decided to make it seem as if the note is being sent by you as opposed to being sent to you.”
(Image credit: Rihab Mehboob)
Using the app for reminders – thanks to the message notification feature – I can receive a slight nudge between 1 minute and 24 hours, similar to someone messaging me back. I asked Mehoob what other situations this could be used for.
“In fairness, they could be used in any situation! If you want some motivation, they could be used to act as if others are giving commands or letting you know what tasks are left.”
Already I’m using Message Yourself as an alternative note-taking app for sudden to-do lists, but there’s plenty of opportunity for improvements. I wanted to know what was coming up next for features.
“I’m currently attempting to add Siri Shortcuts, where you could let Siri know of any tasks or notes you might want to jot down but do let me know what you’d like to see.”
After confirming that vertical scrolling for Stories was in development back in 2021, Instagram is starting to test the feature in select countries.
Instagram Stories is the company’s take on tapping through short stories that can last up to ten seconds, both in a photo or a video. You can add in a GIF, tag someone, add filters, and more to update your followers on what you’re doing at that moment in time.
But when you decide to go to the next or previous story, you have to tap on the left or right in certain areas of the story in order to do these actions. This could be problematic as some tags placed in a story may overlap, so you may skip a story when you wanted to tap on the tagged person or place in question.
Navigating through your Stories by swiping will alleviate this, and while there’s a good chance that its similarity to TikTok will be mentioned, it’s a much better method for everyone, especially if you primarily use Stories on Instagram.
The company has been rolling out features to better rival TikTok in video content, such as Reels and the ability to add web links to a Story.
However, since Instagram confirmed that vertical scrolling was under development, users had been waiting to see if it would be implemented. One year on, we get confirmation that it’s at least being tested in countries such as Turkey.
🚨 Instagram is testing a vertical swipe stories feed in Turkeyh/t @yousufortaccom pic.twitter.com/KdJa9CTnTlJanuary 12, 2022
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As smartphones get bigger or, foldable, having to tap on the left side of the screen to go back to a story is going to be more frustrating for users.
Swiping up or down to navigate your Stories is a much more appealing method. It’s TikTok’s main way of browsing videos in its app, and it would be a welcome change to Instagram Stories.
With a chronological feed due out soon, swiping in a Story could be the next big feature for 2022.
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