David Nield says, “Once our homes are kitted out with all manner of smart devices and sensors, where does the growing mass of collected data go to? Enter Kinesis Firehose, one of several services announced by Amazon at its AWS Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas this week. The Firehose lets device makers stream data straight to the cloud—the Amazon Web Services cloud, to be exact. It builds on the existing Kinesis framework but makes life even easier for developers and engineers: All of the monitoring, scaling and data management is taken care of by Amazon. That means anyone with a home security... [...]

Matt Asay says, “To every big-business tech vendor of pretty much any kind, Amazon Web Services has a message for you: Goodbye. At its annual Re:Invent conference, AWS dismantled pretty much every comfortable fallacy that legacy vendors have used to battle the public cloud generally and AWS specifically. “Security!” “Performance!” and other myths all crumbled, one by one, with customer testimonials and new product announcements. And while some complain that AWS is becoming the Mother of All Lock-in, customers don’t seem to care. Developer Jeff Waugh declares that new AWS services... [...]

John Van Akkeren says, “The journey from product idea to commercialization is full of opportunities, challenges, risks and rewards. The best road to a successful, end-to-end product introduction is paved with constant customer touchpoints and a deep empathy for their wants and needs. Sounds basic, but in reality, staying in lockstep with customers is an iterative process that must be integrated into every phase—from product planning, discovery, design and development to manufacturing and delivery. Boosting The Customer’s Voice Here are 10 tips for making sure your customer’s voice comes... [...]

David Nield says, “Both Facebook and Apple believe they’ve built a better home for news content on mobile devices—self-contained apps where load times are fast and ads are discreet—but Google isn’t going to lie down without a fight. The result is the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, a new open-source HTML standard available to all that uses existing web technologies to do exactly what Facebook and Apple are doing: Creating a structure where pages appear instantly and advertising is tastefully added (this being Google, of course, ads stay in the picture). AMP HTML, as the new... [...]

Brian Solis says, “So many companies entrust customer engagement to marketing. At the same time, many customers blame marketing’s inability to engage them in relevant and meaningful ways as one of the top roadblocks for referring brands or becoming loyal. If companies don’t change how they engage customers, including people, tools and practices, customers will simply go elsewhere. This is what blows my mind about customer engagement today. Customers are the lifeblood of any organization, yet engagement is relegated to departments that run disengaged and disparate strategies, such as email... [...]

Scott Gerber says, “Scaling any business takes time, money, and often, a lot more effort than you think. Scaling a service-based business in particular is tricky—we’ve seen many try to scale and then crash as they outpace their own growth. So how can you make sure not to follow in their footsteps? I asked 9 entrepreneurs from YEC for their best advice on scaling service-based businesses. Here, they share what strategies worked for them, and what they would suggest others do. 1. Outsource, Then Hire When growing rapidly, the knee-jerk reaction is to hire to meet the increasing demand.... [...]

Adriana Lee says, “At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco Monday, three virtual reality proponents hit the stage to talk about the potential—and the pitfalls—of virtual reality. It’s an exciting time for VR pioneers like Richard Marks, head of research and development at Sony; Paul Raphaël of Felix & Paul Studios; and HTC’s Claude Zellweger. But judging by what we’ve seen of the technology so far, it’s nothing compared to what the future holds. The Many Uses Of Virtual Reality Already, augmented and virtual reality can act as tools for anything from education... [...]

David Nield says, “Cloud and digital solutions provider Built.io has a new product to show off, one that reflects an increasingly connected digital world and a growing trend for services to help navigate it. Built.io Flow provides a way to link software, back-end systems, mobile apps, and even sensors and devices through a straightforward drag-and-drop interface. Flow, previously available in beta, is now generally available to customers. Built.io cofounders Neha Sampat and Matthew Baier gave ReadWrite a preview of Flow in April. Where Built.io’s earlier products focused on letting nondevelopers... [...]

David Nield says, “The battle for the mobile payment market can begin in earnest now: On Thursday, Google announced the official launch of Android Pay in the U.S. for later this month. Similar to Apple Pay, Android Pay will allows users to pay for goods and services with a tap of their smartphone in stores—assuming that the device supports Near Field Communication (NFC) short-range wireless technology and runs Android 4.4 KitKat or above. (The terminal itself must also support Android Pay and NFC.) However, the component of Android Pay of most interest to developers—the ability to make in-app... [...]