By: Chris Ferneyhough - SVP Technology Practice – Vision Critical If you are a regular reader of tech blogs, chances are you've noticed the term "cloud computing" being thrown around with increasing frequency. So, what is cloud computing and why is receiving so much attention lately? Generally speaking, cloud computing is service delivery over the Internet. If you've got a webmail account, like Gmail or Hotmail, you are using a cloud computing service. Continuing with the email example, the traditional approach to ... | Read More

By Andrew Grenville, Chief Research Officer - Vision Critical As technological advances create a growing enticement to consumers, the level of integration that people subscribe to with gadgets and inventions becomes increasingly interesting – and segmented. A recent international survey on technology adoption has identified four technological people groups: The Techno Elites, The Technology Challenged, The Pragmatic Users, and The Techno Snails. All four segments have been identified and profiled, complete with video interviews, in Vision Critical’s Technology Segmentation Study [1]. The ... | Read More

By Chris Ferneyhough - SVP Technology Practice – Vision Critical One of the more surprising tech trends of 2009 was the success [1] of the netbook. If you are unfamiliar with netbooks, think of a laptop - but smaller, lighter, and much less powerful than most traditional laptops. The smaller form factor of netbooks makes them appealing to those who want even more portability than traditional laptops offer. And of course another undeniable appeal of netbooks is that they are less ... | Read More

BY: CHRIS FERNEYHOUGH [1], SVP TECHNOLOGY PRACTICE - VISION CRITICAL The idea of respondents completing questionnaires on mobile devices has long been “the next big thing” in online research, however, like many “next big things”, most of us have been waiting for it to actually happen. However, with the explosion of mobile Internet usage over the last few months, it looks like that time is rapidly approaching. At the recent ESOMAR [2] event in Chicago, we had the opportunity to present our ... | Read More

By: Chris Ferneyhough, SVP Technology Practice, Vision Critical On April 23, 2009 Apple [1] announced that the one-billionth application (commonly referred to as “apps”) had been downloaded from the App Store. This was a significant achievement, as it took only nine months for Apple to hit one-billion app downloads [2]. As a point of comparison, it took three years for Apple to reach one-billion song downloads. This is not a true apples-to-apples comparison (pun unintended) as most song downloads would ... | Read More