Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is cited as 82% of today’s cloud investments, and is the deployment model for 84% of new applications, so what is SaaS? SaaS is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider, and made available to customers over a network. SaaS provides the most visible value to end users of the cloud models. SalesForce was created in 1999, and was the first SaaS platform built from scratch to achieve rapid growth. The products and services of SalesForce included customer relationship management, the sales cloud, and the service…

As Tumblr users cope with news of a new overlord, many are voicing both concern and annoyance at the $1.1 billion deal. The most vocal are getting their message heard and it’s spreading across Tumblr as well as other social networks, but it’s not enough to make Yahoo or Tumblr concerned. Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg noticed something Sunday after the rumors of a done deal started surfacing: “Imports have actually spiked on the rumors even though it’s Sunday: normally we import 400-600 posts an hour from Tumblr, last hour it was over 72,000.” While some are saying this is just the beginning…

  Small businesses need websites. But not just any old website will work. Try to avoid these 10 Web design mistakes so your site will help your business succeed instead of slowing it down.   1. Poor navigation tools Your site’s visitors need to know how to find information. Without good navigation tools, that’s nearly impossible. Make sure that you divide your content into sections that visitors can identify easily. Ideally, you want a site that branches from big ideas to small ideas. Your homepage identifies your business and who you are. Then links within the page take the visitor…

Coffee isn’t exactly a technology topic that we would normally cover, but when it’s the subject of an infographic that was creatively placed on a Starbucks sleeve, it qualifies as something interesting enough to post. Visual.ly desiger Raj Kamal put this little graphic together. This isn’t an official Starbucks infographic, but it should be. As the designer said, “I am an infographist who has nothing better to do, but to annoy everyone around me.” We’re definitely not annoyed. In fact, we’re pretty impressed. Here’s the original graphic as it was put together followed by an enlarged and vertical…

No. Go ahead and mark this one down as one of those nifty features that Google puts out there without telling many people that sits around until they decide that it failed and they shutter it. In this case, it won’t necessarily ever be shuttered, but it will likely sit there as an obscure menu item like The Flying Dutchman at In ‘n Out. The concept is this. Send money by “attaching” it through Gmail. It connects directly with Google Wallet and allows the receiver to do so without even having a Gmail account. It’s simple, elegant, and very easy to implement. It’s arguably easier to get going than Western…

It’s a digital age. The worlds of advertising, branding, and art are all flooded with creative people trying to make their mark in the realm of graphic design. How can one tell whether they have what it takes to join this world? In the flowchart below by Sikich, the answer to that question becomes a little more clear. It’s the type of profession that requires many small decisions to be made before one can make an accurate big decision. Can you visually translate a concept or idea? Do you manage your time well? Do you even like people? These are just some of the questions that you should answer before making…

There hasn’t been a movie since The Sixth Sense that had more potential for disaster than Star Trek: Into Darkness. No, Spock doesn’t see dead people, but that doesn’t take away for the desperate need to avoid that annoying co-worker who loves to talk about the movie he watched this weekend. Kudos to J.J. Abrams for pulling off one of the hardest challenges in Hollywood – making a movie that appeases the long-time faithful while still offering a complete experience to those who aren’t as familiar with the source material. Rotten Tomatoes, the consolidated source of reputable reviews, gave the…

If there’s one major flaw with the way that many businesses use automation tools, it’s that they’re not able to properly control the flow of content from its longest form down to it’s shortest form. This is unfortunate because using RSS feeds to post to Facebook and Twitter from a blog, for example, doesn’t save much time at all but minimizes the effectiveness of the networks. It’s all about flow. It’s about taking advantage of the strengths of the various networks will not falling into the traps that each allows. Let’s take a look at an example of content flow. In this case, we’re going to work it down…

For all of their technological genius and massive resources, Google sure doesn’t know how to make hardware. It’s a problem that has plagued them for years but it seems to be best highlighted with the Chromebook Pixel. Over at CNET, they were focused on one of the major bugs with the laptop – the challenge the device has with connecting to cameras. There’s good and bad that comes with having an operating system that is designed to be light and shareable. One of the bad parts is that you often miss some of the common accepted notions that other operating systems (and their users) take for granted. Because…

There are two stages to this gambit by Yahoo that must be accomplished. They have to beat out Facebook, Microsoft, and anybody else interested in the 10-digit price that Tumblr is likely to fetch in the coming days. Then, they have to let the site be as it is and make no changes at all to the platform. The Swisher/Kafka tandem over at AllThingsD have reported that the Yahoo board is going to meet this weekend to discuss buying the social blogging platform for a reported $1.1 billion in cash. Sources said that the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s CEO Marissa Mayer has decided that buying Tumblr was going…